Archive of An Unknown

Infinite Scroll

2022-08-14T12:55:00.001+05:30

Have you heard about ‘Infinite Scroll’?

Yes?

No?

Do you know what that is?

Yes. You know. Either you know about it well or you know what it is but you were never conscious about it or paid attention to it.

Yes, it’s that web development technique that makes you scroll endlessly on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and all your favorite social media sites. If you have seen the web in the pre-social media age and remember how the web pages used to be those days, you will realize the difference. There were web sites and then there were web pages within each site. You go through the content on the first page and then click a ‘Next’ link at the bottom of the page to see what is there on the next page. If the content was heavy on each page, you read the entire page and clicked next after that, your fatigue was quicker. If it was just pictures or light content or you just skimmed through those contents, you might be left with some more energy to see more pages. Just clicking the next button so many times would drain your energy. Compare it with what’s happening today. You are never tired of scrolling through thousands of stories, pictures or products.

It’s not the same, but almost similar to the development in televisions. You had to get up and walk up to the TV to change the channel every time, so the chances of changing channels were limited and hence there were fewer channels overall. Then came the remote control, which made changing channels so easy, making a large number of us what was fashionably called ‘couch potatoes’. Imagine you don’t even have to put so much effort to flip through channels with an even more advanced technology. That’s what has happened in the web world. You are stuck in it forever.

Do you know when this all started?

Not very long ago. Someone by name Aza Raskin invented this concept only in 2006. Yes, don’t make a mistake. There was no infinite scrolling on the web before that.

Do you know what he felt about his invention?

He said his own idea wastes about 200,000 human lifetimes per day. Yes, read it again. 200,000 lifetimes, not hours or minutes, all within a day.

Infinite scroll on the web just on computers would have been a different story. You still get tired of scrolling down using a mouse or touchpad. But your index finger is much much more enduring. A pen is mightier than a sword and the fingers have become even more powerful for some, addicting the rest of the population to their powerful as well as useless content.

It’s invented in 2006. The idea almost captures all of the internet users. 10 years later, McAfee coined another term for the extremists of this phenomenon. Zombie Scrolling. When infinite scrolling enables you to scroll endlessly and mindlessly without knowing why you are doing it, you become a zombie scroller.

Are you a zombie scroller?

Yes?

No?

Sure?

Not sure?

Even if I am a zombie scroller, what’s wrong with that? And what’s the problem I am creating for society?

Information overload in general has been a problem post information revolution. That’s amplified by infinite scrolling.

I have a cousin who reads too much. Isn’t it information overload? Is she not overloaded with too much information when she reads so much?

She does learn a lot when she reads a lot. That’s not necessarily information overload.

How?

When one reads a lot, most times they know what they are reading and they do that with a purpose. It’s also streamlined knowledge intake in a focused subject or area at any point in time. On the other hand, when you scroll infinitely on a social media site, what happens is automatic collection of discrete, unrelated and often irrelevant information without your brain’s permission. You have too much information in bits and pieces and you don’t know what to do with all of it and you don’t even have time to organize them in a useful manner.

An avid reader collects what she wants. If she is looking for gold she collects gold, if she is looking for stones she gets stones and if she is looking for garbage she ends up with garbage. Look at the other one. He doesn’t know what he wants. He collects whatever comes his way - gold, stone, garbage… and much more that he doesn’t even want! What would he do with them? All his valuable space (brain space) would be used to store more useless stuff than anything he wants. That’s the difference.

What does information overload do to the human brain?

Just like in a computer, the human brain has a working memory, which is used for processing information. When that is overloaded with too much data, the processing power is impacted.

Information overload either paralyzes us from taking a decision or a good decision with more and more confusing data than convincing information. An individual gets confused, frustrated and stressed. A society coins terms like infobesity, infoxication, and information anxiety. In the long run, it also modifies the human brain to bias towards quantity over quality. Those who come with reems of useless data will be appreciated over someone that comes with a one pager containing the most relevant information. Yes, we start going back in development, valuing data more than information.

It’s not just information overload. Infinite scroll has other problems as well. In most cases, infinite scroll is almost like multitasking with too much context switching and format switching. You switch from text to audio to video to pictures in no time. It’s like watching TV, listening to music and reading a book while running on a treadmill. If multitasking is a productivity killer, what would infinite scroll be?

While we are busy consuming what it offers, infinite scroll just consumes us and takes us away from our priority tasks and even sleep. It overexposes us to negative content and makes us negative people in general. This is called doomscrolling. One of the recent examples for this is the COVID-19 news stories. While the real pandemic hit the world on one side, doomscrolling was spreading its wings as a pandemic in parallel. There have been studies linking infinite scrolling to increased depression, anxiety, and even self harming behavior including suicide in extreme cases. When you doomscroll, you don’t just scroll for doom, you are also doomed to scroll infinitely.

How does this happen?

It’s all due to a hormone called dopamine. Dopamine levels go high when we experience pleasure and low when we feel a lack of it. Once we get into infinite scrolling, the dopamine levels go up seeing the type of contents that give us pleasure. We want more and more of those contents to keep it high. On the other hand, not every content is pleasure-bearing as we want it to be. So the scrolling continues, expecting more and more and more. Stop scrolling, the dopamine level falls down. Then you pick up your phone and this cycle continues. This is called the dopamine loop. You need to consciously do something to break this cycle.

If it was this bad, why did the social media companies adopt this design technique? Very simple. It’s bad for the user, not for those companies. Their only goal is to increase your engagement on their site so they can sell something to you by making you click on some of their advertisements and make some money out of that.

You might say, “I don’t buy anything like that. I just use it to my benefit.”

That’s great. So the company doesn't gain anything by engaging you on their site, but you gain a lot by using their content. Still, your engagement helps the company to make you see more advertisements on their platform because they are paid based on the views. And, they would use these engagement statistics to attract more advertisers towards their platform. Or maybe you don’t even realize what you are buying and what gets added to your mental kart to buy later. You don’t buy anything today doesn’t mean you will never buy. So either they identify their current buyers and seed a thought in you to become their future buyer.

So where is the end?

Companies talk about corporate social responsibility. What do these social media companies claim as their corporate social responsibility? Sharing a fraction of their profit for some charity work? That’s not enough. They have to become responsible and go for pagination instead of infinite scroll or they can provide the best of both - infinite scrolling with timers reminding their users every 15 minutes or so to start with.

How reasonable or absurd does this sound to you?

That would tell you how much faith you have in the concept of corporate social responsibility in general and that of the technology companies in particular.

Evil Eye

2021-07-17T12:41:00.003+05:30

I did really well in the interview. I think my year-long search has ended today. I got back home. Karthi was waiting anxiously. He was more keen on the results than I was. He kept saying, “If one of us got it, the other one would also get it soon. And, we can manage with one person’s salary until the other one starts earning.”

Karthi and I didn’t become friends after coming to Bangalore. We studied together for four years. We were best friends from the first week of our college. We stayed in the same room in the hostel in the first year. We managed to stay together in the final year also. Even in the second year and third year, when we didn’t stay together, we always used to be together. He would be in my room or I would be in his depending on whoever woke up first. We would never go to eat without each other. There were a few friends like us. We were like an exception yet. A lot of our friends used to make fun of us. Some of them used to call us ‘twins’.

Today, most of those friends have gotten a job. Some of them got on campus. Some got within a few months. Most of us are in Bangalore. A few are in Chennai too. There is one group of five friends in Madiwala and another four in Koramangala. There are four in Chennai. Karthi and I decided to stay away from them. We stay in a two bedroom house near Electronics City. It can house two or three more. We would be able to save some money on the rent as well. However, we were not too keen. Had we stayed with one of those groups in Madiwala or Koramangala, we could have saved on the rent entirely. The norm they have is, the rent is shared by only those who have a job. We are okay to bear this hardship for the comfort of staying with each other. We have stood by each other for five years. We haven’t found another person who is this truthful to us. Moreover, once there is a third person, it becomes three groups. We have tried it in the past and it never worked.

I never felt this confident after any interview. And, no interviewer spoke this positively while concluding. Some of them speak positively, but you know they are just empty words. This one is different. Karthi would be relieved if I told him this. I would tell only Karthi. No one else. We happily shared the news with people in the past. But we ended up feeling embarrassed when the offers we got were rolled back. Karthi had this experience once. I had it twice. Companies think this is the new normal. These are crazy times. It isn’t easy getting a job in the middle of a recession like this. Even if you got, it isn’t guaranteed that the companies would honor their offers. They might call you and say before the joining date that they are indefinitely postponing the date of joining. I don’t know how these HRs would feel when they are asked to communicate this kind of bad news. It’s the new normal for them. They might be convinced that that’s what they are paid for.

Karthi himself told me many times. “Let’s not even share the news with our parents until we join a company and wear the ID card.” ID cards were a big deal those days. People used to proudly wear those ID cards wherever they went. You were received better in shops and shopping malls if you wore ID cards. He is right. We were so broken because we celebrated too early and broadcasted the news too widely. I had the first experience. Then, Karthi had a similar experience. I was a fool to repeat the same mistake a second time. I was more careful. But I just shared with my ‘real’ well wishers. Even then things went wrong. That’s why Karthi doesn’t want to share with even parents this time.

“Really, Karthi? Do you think even parents would have an evil eye on us?”

“I am not saying that. All I am saying is, why take a chance. You never know what plans they make with your first month salary. So why give hope and then shatter it!”

It makes sense. I am not going to call my parents and announce it this time. Well, Karthi… should I even tell Karthi then? What’s the guarantee that he wouldn’t have an evil eye? He has been struggling for a year too. Oh, no! Why am I becoming this cheap! What next? Am I going to suspect myself?

I am really confused. If my parents could be suspected, why not Karthi? No. He is more than my parents for me. I am not going to hide this from him.

“It went really well, da. Really well means really well. Not like the last really. He asked me, can you start on Monday? He called his HR in front of me and said, I have a new joiner this Monday, will you be able to ensure he has everything in place by 9am this Monday? What more do you want? I think we finally cracked it.”

“You cracked it, da.”

He said the HR would call me first thing in the morning. It’s noon now. Technically it’s not morning anymore. I think I should call them without any more delay.

“Hello, good morning. My name is Ganesh. Can I speak to Mr. Naveen?”

The Mr. was not required. That’s what happens when one is this desperate and anxious, right?

The call got transferred to Naveen, but Naveen didn’t come on line. It was the receptionist again. “Sorry, Naveen is busy in a meeting. He will call you back later.”

“OK. Can I speak to the HR please?”

“Sure. Please hold on the line.”

The call got transferred to the HR. It was a long wait. It’s a female voice. “Hi Ganesh, good morning. I was planning to call you later today. Good you called. Unfortunately, the project you were interviewed for was put on hold. So we would have to push your start date. I will call you back after discussing with Naveen later today.”

I never got that call later that day or on any day.

You guessed it right. The next time, I didn’t tell Karthi. He returned the favor too. Both of us are in good jobs today.

Wrong Window

2021-07-09T12:29:00.000+05:30

It was a hot dark summer night. I was chatting with multiple people at the same time, as I always do post midnight on almost all days. I always sit facing the window in my room. I was juggling between multiple windows on my Windows laptop and was looking out of my window every now and then as a reflex whenever I had to think about something.

“Oops… Wrong Window!” is the bottom most unread message in my Messenger window. That made me curious about the previous message.

Aditya Kumar (Twitter ID: xxx, Facebook ID: xxx)
Sai Babu (Twitter ID: xxx, No Facebook ID)
Mohammed Ali (Twitter ID: xxx, Facebook ID: xxx)

...

A long list of names. I follow each one of them in the list. There are boys, girls, men, women, Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, North Indians, South Indians and all types of people in the list. There is one thing common about all of them. Each one of them is an opinion creator in my country. Each one of them writes against the government all the time. They ask a lot of difficult questions. While some of them started doing it only after this government came, most of them questioned the previous government also tooth and nail - with the same tooth and same nail.

I have always wondered how thick their skin must be. They get trolled like crazy. Their family members, women, and children are cursed. Some of them have even received death threats. What’s interesting is, when you end up following one of these people, you will eventually become a follower of all of them. On certain issues you will realize that some of them have a crazy opinion and they don't deserve your attention. So what happens? You end up unfollowing them only to start following them again when you see one of their tweets retweeted by someone whom you follow. It's a vicious cycle.

There is one name that I didn’t find on top of the list. That’s Ramesh’s. Ramesh is the one who just sent me the list of names and oopsed. He should be the first one in the list. You can see his comments almost under each message of each of these people in the list on every social media platform. He strongly supports their views and fights with those who oppose them or troll them. I have seen him save many of these people from trouble.

Well, why did he send this list to me now? And then why did he oops about it? Why did he say ‘wrong window’? Then who is the owner of the right window?

After a gap, he started typing.

“Nothing, bro. You can use it too. These are the people that you should follow on social media. Our tribe.”

***

Ramesh is the one who started the #gobackpm hashtag for the first time ever a few years back. He is also credited with many other viral hashtags — like #ourlivesmatter, #criminalsinpolitics, #democracyindanger, etc.

He posted “Go back Prime Minister. This place has no place for your hate politics. #gobackpm” when the Prime Minister visited the state for the first time after becoming the prime minister.

That became a national trend and then a global one. It was promoted by these same people. They don't belong to the same state. Then what’s their interest in the prime minister’s visit to a state where most of them don’t belong? Why do they do this?

“Where are you from? Why are you bothered about my state? #getlostantinational #mindyourbusiness” replied a nationalist who advocates ‘one nation — one religion — one language’ theory. He tweeted that in a language only his state can understand.

Ramesh replied, “My place has no place for idiots. #getlostidiot.”

The nationalist replied, “Another anti-national spotted. Arrest this ba$tard. @policecommissionerx.”

He posted another tweet to his followers, “Good news. Anti-national ba$tard Ramesh’s bones will be broken tonight. His followers who miss him can meet him in X1 police station. Count your bones too, before and after.”

This went viral in his circles. It got liked, retweeted and replied in large numbers.

***

If you look at the names of these people, both first name and last name, you will realize some of them HAVE to be the opposers of the government. There is no way they can be the supporters. It’s a government against them, their names and their existence. Likewise, some of the other names can no way be the opposers of the government. They should just be blind supporters and promoters. It’s their own government - of their people, for their people and by their people. Ramesh has a surname that'll surprise most people when they read his posts against the government. That attracts more people to him - both out of admiration and disgust.

I started following him when I saw his name three times within a few minutes of scrolling on my timeline one day, maybe a night - late night. He used to criticize the previous government too. He's one of those social media warriors who helped the current ruling party win this time. Everyone knows this.

His hashtag #changeordie is one of the many hashtags that sent the previous government home. People called him names.

“How are you paid by the opposition? Per tweet or per hashtag? #costlychangeagent” asked an angry reply.

“I keep saying this. There is no way I can prove this until we have a new government. I will be the first to criticize the new government when they do something wrong. Wait and watch.”

I didn’t believe it. Nobody would have believed it.

But he kept his word.

“I truly believed this guy had a spine. I made you believe it too. I am sorry I just realized it’s photoshopped. #photoshoppedspine.”

This was his third tweet post election results. This was for inviting a leader that he hates to the swearing-in ceremony. Yes, he started criticizing the new government even before it was sworn in. His popularity soared. Those few weeks he had the following of people from both sides of the political spectrum.

Then slowly people started unfollowing him for his ‘undue’ criticism of the government. People thought he went overboard and he was too negative.

“Hey, this guy is sick. He's just an attention seeker. All this drama for just more followers? Why don’t you have some stands of your own or standards? #killnegativity”

He never stopped criticizing the government in his own style and words. He started losing more followers. Nothing changed. He kept doing what he was doing. Over the next few years, he started getting back his followers, a combination of the same followers who unfollowed him earlier and a totally new set of them.

The best thing about him is that he talks with facts. He is scientific. He throws numbers for everything. When he says something, people generally find it hard to refute him. When the fights get dirty he gets really dirty. He calls names too. Every now and then he drags people in powerful positions into a controversy and beats them to death. Every time he does this he is retweeted, liked and shared hundreds of thousands of times and made more popular. He keeps getting the regular threatening messages. But no one has ever done anything to him.

He trolls his own people too. There is a retired judge who keeps writing his views on politics every now and then. He has never spared anyone that disagreed with him. He is a master in bullying people with opposite views. Surprisingly, Ramesh and the judge have never locked horns on any issue so far.

Suddenly on a dull Wednesday afternoon, this photo surfaced on Twitter — Ramesh standing with the judge in a family event — both of them visibly happy about standing next to each other.

One of Ramesh’s followers posted it on Twitter and asked, “Ramesh, what’s your relationship with this bully? Are you very proud of it? Is that why you never dragged him down?”

Ramesh replied, “He is my uncle and guru. Whatever I am today is because of him. My discussions and disagreements with him are private. I haven’t signed any agreement to make everything in my personal life public.”

The crowd was not satisfied. Each one raised a provocative question.

“You said only fools would call it a masterstroke. Your uncle called it a masterstroke too. Is he a fool too or does he have an exemption because he is your uncle and guru?”

“Anybody who calls anything by this government a masterstroke is a fool. Period.”

Someone replied, “Wow! You call your guru a fool? Your mom would be so proud of you.”

Then this one from Ramesh should have hurt the judge really hard: “He is a retired judge. That means, he is aged. With age, he lost his judgement. Don’t bother him.”

Then the bully master started firing from his handle too. “Boy, don’t teach your father how to…”

Someone replied, “Uncle, are you his uncle or father? The nation wants to know… lol.”

The social media showed its ugly face. It’s not that they haven’t seen this before. But this was getting really out of control. They both stopped tweeting about it at this point. They must have spoken with each other on the phone or one of their relatives must have called them both and stopped this from getting any worse.

After a few days, while Ramesh got back to his tweeting as usual, his uncle closed his account. Ramesh’s fandom celebrated him for belling the rogue cat.

“You are a disgrace to our community. You are doing all this just to bump up your popularity. All these at the cost of your own people who will come to rescue you when you are in trouble. Those who celebrate you here won’t be there to help you,” tweeted one of his people.

***

Then came the next masterstroke of the government. The prime minister came on National Television and said, “This is going to make our country a superpower within the next 6 months.”

Next day, Ramesh released a 30 minutes video explaining how this was going to mess up the entire economy. No surprise. What Ramesh said happened. I couldn’t control myself from pinging him on messenger.

“Hi Ramesh, I am a huge fan of yours. I just love the video that you made about the recent masterstroke of the government. Have no words. I knew this was going to fail. But I just couldn't put them in words. I knew his fanhood was celebrating too early. Just out of their love for their leader they were wow wowing everything he did. You are awesome. You are unbelievable. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge with these god forsaken deaf people.”

He just thumbs-upped. Not even a word. It was disappointing. That's okay. He's such a big intellectual. Why would he waste his time with me - one of his thousands of fans? He just has 24 hours. I understand. I understood.

I pinged him privately to share my feedback on his next video as well.

“Ramesh, as always, this one is awesome too. Where do you get all these data from? And how do you make it such a coherent and convincing story? Wow! Hats off.”

This time, he said, “Thank you very much.” Four words.

Next time, he spoke a little more.

“Thank you so much”

“Where are you from?”

“What do you do?”

Three questions.

Then I called him on messenger and spoke for a long time. I tried my best to show him I was smart too. I asked him a lot of questions - smart questions - what I thought he would find smart. I showed my interest by almost commenting under all of his tweets. He would like most of them. It worked. Every time I called him he spoke a lot with me. He asked me a lot of questions too. That meant I had to read a lot to impress him - a lot of his own writing.

After every discussion with him, I felt like I came out smarter. I really loved every discussion I had with him. Then we started talking about what to trend each weekend and how to go about it. We had some of these people (whose names were just shared by Ramesh) in those discussions. By getting into the inner circle of these opinion creators, more people started following me too. That came with its own share of problems. Here are some of the private messages I received:

“Hey ba$tard, Do you know how your death is going to be? Just note it. It's going to be very cruel. Have you ever thought about what would happen to your loved ones and wellwishers after that? Think about it.”

“Hey anti-national bugger, wait for the day the police are going to knock your doors and then break your bones. You're being watched. I give you an option. You close your account today, we let you live longer.”

“If an individual with a few thousand faceless followers can do so much, imagine what a government with so much power and intelligence can do to you? Mind you, I am not from the IT cell. I have your name in the list. The government is watching you.”

***

Wait, let me read the list again.

25. Diya Singh (Twitter ID: xxx, Facebook ID: xxx)

26. Dev Patel (Twitter ID: xxx, Facebook ID: xxx)

27. AH! How did I miss this? Whom did he send my name to?

Oh my… He is a… I clicked on his name, clicked on the three dots, yes - ‘Block’. I don’t know what he will think. Let him think whatever he wants. Who cares!

I should block him on all social media platforms.

***

Charity

2021-06-11T12:35:00.000+05:30

Those days, exactly at 10:00 pm, the electricity used to be cut for a minute and at 10:01 it would be back. The elders used to say, “They change the line”. Even today, I don’t understand what it means. I never experienced this phenomenon after I grew up.

One of those nights, the elders were playing Thayam, a South Indian board game, in our thinnai, a raised platform in front of the house, which every house used to have those days and I don’t see in the houses being built these days anywhere. Ram uncle, Lakshmi aunty, Abdul uncle and Meeran uncle were the players. There were five other people, three adults and two kids, watching the game. Vadi and I were the kids.

It was 10:00 pm. The game was in a critical stage. The power went off as usual. Everyone was so engrossed in the game that no one was prepared for that minute. Within the first few seconds, almost everyone in the group cursed the ‘line man’ who would just be doing his job.

I was so well prepared for that minute. While nobody else cared about the time, I kept looking at the clock when the game was going on. Around 9:50, I realized the disappointment on the way, went inside and grabbed a match box from the kitchen. Nobody was noticing. At 9:55, I was ready with a matchstick. Within seconds of powercut, I quickly struck the head of the match on the side of the matchbox and lit up the place.

The same mouths that cursed the line man started praising me for my spontaneity and smartness. Those days, I was living all my life to grab this kind of attention whenever possible.

“Wow, that’s my lovely nephew!” Ram uncle started.

“In my 35 years of existence on this planet, I have never seen such a responsible kid!” said Meeran uncle.

“There are so many of us here. What made this kid alone be prepared for this crucial minute! He will go places,” said Lakshmi aunty.

All these for saving a minute of thayam game! As the praises were pouring, within the next few seconds, there was brighter light from a different direction. Everyone looked there.

“Wow, that’s my nephew! He is smarter than yours, buddy!” said Abdul uncle to Ram uncle.

That was Vadi, with a torchlight in his hand. He stole the limelight from me that night.

This is the first instance of Vadi doing that to me. Once he tasted the elders’ praise, he started doing it more often. The tug of war that started between us that day never stopped till date.

***

Vadi proved he is smarter than me by scoring more than me in the tenth grade. He ranked first and I came fourth. He continued in the same school in our small town. That’s all his parents could afford. I went to a boarding school in Madurai. My parents spent ten or hundred times (I don’t know how much) more money for my education and ensured I got better scores than Vadi in the twelfth grade. With all that investment my parents made, I easily got into a government engineering college, which is the only government thing that rich people in my country value more than the private.

While everything else is better when provided by the private, engineering education alone is better provided by the government. The private colleges spend millions of rupees every year to defeat the government colleges. But they have never been successful unlike I was with Vadi. They provide better infrastructure and facilities but at the end of the day it is the government college alumni who make it big in the job market.

Vadi got much lower than me. So he couldn’t make it to any government college. His parents couldn’t afford a private engineering seat. So he ended up in the local arts and science college. While I was doing Bachelor of Engineering (BE) in one of the best government engineering colleges in Madurai, he was doing Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.) in the local college. Though I had lost to Vadi more times than I won, this win put an end to our endless competition. That’s what I thought until our paths crossed again many years later.

He finished his degree in three years and went to work when I was in my final year. He started earning on his own and supporting his family while I was still depending on my parents’ money. Some of my family friends told me how much he struggled without a job for six months in Bangalore and also to get a job. With all his smartness, he finally made it. He must have thought he won there. I didn’t care. I had bigger plans in my life.

I took a year break, prepared well for the CAT exam, cracked it and got into IIM Bangalore. I got hired on campus by one of the most valued multinational technology companies. Then there was no looking back. I started in Hyderabad and ended up in Seattle. My next move was even bigger. I moved from Seattle to the Bay Area. Now I was working for the richest technology company on the planet, making double the money per month than I was with the Seattle multinational, which was the richest at some point in time.

Amma (mom) once told me on my Saturday night call, “Hey, Vadi’s mom told me he is coming to the same place where you are.”

I just said, “OK” and didn’t show any more interest in the subject.

“Go and meet him once, or I will give him your number. Speak to him if he calls.”

No interest from me again.

Amma changed the topic.

Three years later, sometime in the late 2010s, on another Saturday night call, “Vadi’s mom told me he and his family were asked to leave within a month. His H1B extension got rejected it seems. Would you be able to help him in any way?”

“Amma! What do you think I am doing here? I am not working in immigration.”

That’s it. She didn’t talk about him with me anymore.

I made some smart investments every now and then, which made me much richer than I could imagine. I ensured a constant inflow of money regardless of whether I went to work or not. To be frank, I can buy the entire town back home with the money I have. But I am not interested in that. I want to give back to society.

A friend of mine is feeding the homeless people in the entire Bay Area. He and his wife started small with a few meals a day to serve the homeless people in their neighborhood a decade back. They have a team of volunteers now and cook hundreds of meals to serve a larger population. I was inspired by this work. I wanted to do something like this. But someone is already doing this. So I decided to get back to my small town.

It’s not an easy decision. Mind you, I made this decision at the peak of my career. I had more than a decade of my career left. Had I focused on my career, I could have even made it to some of the big lists that get published in local newspapers back home. No, there was something else that was pulling me. I am a man with a vision.

Here I am, back in my hometown, after two decades of dream run in the corporate world, to change something that nobody even dared to dream of. I dreamed of a ‘Hunger-free India’. I started with my hometown. Once I achieved ‘Hunger-free Nagalapuram’, I wanted to do ‘Hunger-free Tamil Nadu’ and then finally ‘Hunger-free India’. Who knows with God’s grace I might end up becoming the man who made ‘Hunger-free world’ possible in the history books.

I started with my hometown first. I first made an announcement about my plans through some community groups within the town and then made some newspaper announcements. I wanted to attract two groups of people. One, I wanted to know about the beggars in the area. Two, I wanted some volunteer support. I was ready to pay an attractive amount to all the volunteers. Some people ridiculed that. They said I was demeaning volunteering itself. I didn’t care. All I cared about was what I wanted to achieve. I would do that by hook or crook. That’s what I am admired for in my circles back home—yeah, the Bay Area is the home now.

It was just a single digit number of beggars in my hometown at first. It was nothing for us. I ensured the photo with me and my wife pretending to be cooking got posted on all our social media accounts. It got widely shared in our circles. WhatsApp messages went around praising the new role model that the town has found. Believe me, I didn’t pay anyone to create those messages.

One full week, we served the beggars in my hometown. I had more volunteers to serve than the beggars to be served. So, at the end of the first week, we decided to expand to a few other small towns around my place. This grew very quickly.

I started getting calls to speak in schools and community meetings around the place. I was the chief guest at many unimaginable events in the next few weeks. On one hand I was too shy to attend these events and on the other I could see that I was enjoying the attention.

On a Saturday morning, my wife woke me up.

“Hey, wake up. Your friend Vadi has come!”

‘What? My friend Vadi eh? When were we friends?’

I woke up.

“Hey, Vadi! How come, man? What brings you here?”

“Hey, man!”

He spoke with the same tone with which he used to speak with me 20 years ago. Almost everyone in the town addresses me differently and speaks in a different tone when they speak to me. This guy, after all a software developer or tester or maybe a project manager in a godforsaken IT company, dares to speak with me, a man who is on his mission to change the humanity’s fate, in such a friendly tone! No, it’s not appreciated.

He went on. “I am truly inspired by the work you do. It’s not a joke. What you have swallowed is much more than what anyone could chew. You need a lot of support from people, people like me, who are proud of what you are doing. I would like to join hands with you. I would even like to take this initiative to the next level. I have some interesting ideas about how we can permanently change people’s lives so that we can dream of a ‘Beggar-free India’ rather than a ‘Hunger-free India’.”

He must have noticed that I am not pleased with his ideas or the tone.

“Thank you, man. I appreciate your thoughts. So, how much homework did you do before coming to meet me and present this?”

“No, nothing much. I always used to think a lot about all these. But it’s only after hearing about what you are doing did I start to think about this more seriously. Does it make sense?”

“Listen. I have been thinking about this since my childhood. Every small thing that is being done today has taken its shape after many years of careful thinking and prototyping and what not. So I would suggest you get back to the drawing board, do your research, and once you have a clear plan then build your own empire. Thank you for your ideas. But they are nothing new.”

“OK.” He stood up like a wounded tiger and left the place.

Let this be the final defeat. Let him not dare to cross my path again. People don’t realize, nobility is not everyone’s cup of coffee.

Strangers

2021-05-31T20:16:00.001+05:30

“I can't think of marrying anyone else. I will stay unmarried forever then. Leave me alone.” This was my grandfather yelling at his favorite aunt.

“Don't talk like that, dear. Your dad can’t take it. I will ask your uncle to speak with him. I’ll speak with your mom too. One of you should come down. If both of you stay where you are, there is no end to this. Don't be adamant,” she tried to reason her brother’s point of view to her nephew.

“She's not an alien. Mathalapuram is just here. Just one and a half miles from here. Why is he this adamant for that? Let’s see. If a 45 year old man is so stubborn, a 20 year old young man, how stubborn will I be? I don't want you to speak with him for me. I'll take care of my problem. Leave it to me. Thank you.”

“No, dear. What’s he saying? Isn't there a single girl in this entire village that you like? Nobody in this family has ever married anyone from outside. He wouldn’t mind a girl from a different caste. But he won’t allow one outside of our village. We have never done that. They are different people. Their thinking, language, behaviour - everything is different from ours. I don’t think it will work, dear.”

The discussion went on like this for hours.

But finally my grandfather came down like this: “Okay, leave it. I will marry a local girl as you all wish and die like a frog in a well. Happy?”

***

“Let him study. Who said no for that? But I can’t let him go to Madurai for that. Nobody in this family has ever gone out of this village for anything,” my grandfather was spoiling my dad’s plans. He couldn’t marry a girl of his choice from just a mile and a half away. How would he allow his son to go 50 miles away?

“No, dear. Your dad isn’t pleased with it. I don’t think it’s the best thing to do either. Think about it. Any problem, we are here for you. If you go there, who is there? Even if you fall sick for a day, there is nobody to take care of you.” This is his mom, my grandmother, doing her part.

“Mom! You’ve gone mad too? Don’t talk like him. Have some sense. Do you know how far people go to realize their dreams? Just three years. Madurai is just here. You make it so difficult! Just because his dad didn’t allow him to marry a girl a mile and a half away, he is doing all this to me.”

This is how my dad got what he wanted. He finally went to Madurai, which is just 50 miles away from our place, after relentless fighting with his dad and mom. As soon as he came back from Madurai after his education, he opened this discussion with his dad.

It was around 6:30 p.m. My grandfather was eating his dinner. My dad went to him and said, “Dad, there is a girl from Kovilpatti, who studied with me. Our caste only…”

My grandfather didn't take his eyes off the food, suddenly raised his voice and said, “This is why I said no upfront. No, that's not going to happen. I knew, first you would want to go there to study, then you would come back and say you fell in love with someone from some godforsaken place. I knew this was coming. That’s why I tried to nip it in the bud.”

“I am not talking about another planet. She's just here - Kovilpatti. If we start after breakfast we'll reach for lunch. So close.”

“No, nobody in this family has ever married anyone outside this village. Max, I can allow you to go up to 10 miles from here. Not more than that. I'm okay with even a murderer but she has to be a local. I have found a girl in Nagalapuram. Good family. Just keep quiet and marry her. I'm not interested in talking about this anymore. That's it. Over.”

My dad could make it to Madurai for his studies after persistent fighting. But he couldn’t succeed when it came to marrying a girl of his choice. He couldn’t go beyond 10 miles. He married the same girl that was found by my grandfather. Yes, that Nagalapuram girl. That’s how I was born.”

***

It’s my turn now.

“Dad, Bangalore is the best place for computer jobs. All my friends are going there. That’s why I am saying.” I begged my dad for his green signal to move to Bangalore along with my friends.

“What? Bangalore, eh? Forget it. You will get killed when there are cauvery riots. We didn’t give birth to you to get killed in a faraway place. You can go anywhere in Tamil Nadu, but nowhere outside of Tamil Nadu.” I just listened to my dad and stayed there.

One by one, all my friends settled in a good job in Bangalore. My friend Saravanan, who came for the Pongal holidays in January, came all the way from Kovilpatti and spent a day and a night in my village to convince my dad and mom.

“Saravana, we're sending him just because of your assurances. You are responsible if anything happens,” my mom scared the guy who came to help me.

Next Sunday, I boarded a bus to Bangalore with Savananan.

I went in January and got a job in May. I became a total Bangalore boy after that. Though I called myself a Bangalorean, I mixed with only Tamil friends there. I stayed with only Tamil friends. Even in the workplace, I used to mix with only Tamil friends. Next, I would talk with tamil-speaking Malayalis, Kannadigas, and Telugus. But I would never speak with others.

Within a few months, I had some problems with the friends in the house where I stayed. Usual compatibility issues. I started looking for a shared accommodation. That also, I was checking with only Tamil friends. Prasanna, a Kannadiga boy in my office, couldn’t control himself from asking me, “Wouldn’t you stay with us? Kannadigas? Do you have a problem staying with only Kannadigas or anybody who can’t speak Tamil?”

I said with an apologetic smile, “Nothing like that. Coming to Bangalore itself was a big thing for me. It's easy to mix with people that speak like us, eat like us, and behave like us, right? That's why. Nothing else.” I never had thought people would observe me to this level of precision.

“I understand. Right now, I'm alone. If you are interested, you can come and stay with me for a month or so. If you like it, continue. Otherwise, you can go and join back your Tamil friends. Don't worry. I don't have a knife in my house. I won’t kill you. You will be safe there,” he laughed.

Something was still bothering me. I would have to speak in English all the time. Is it that? No, there was something more than that.

I just asked myself this question: ‘Is it more difficult to stay with a known Kannadiga than an unknown Tamil? Was it no-problem-at-all when I stayed with Tamil friends?’

I helped convince myself. Next Saturday morning, I was at Prasanna's house with all my stuff. After that, until the day I boarded a flight to the United States of Opportunities, I spent the rest of my life in Bangalore with Prasanna only. Thousands of days. He took me to his hometown. I took him to my village. It was like a dream life.

For Bangalore itself, I had to do so much convincing with mom and dad. You can imagine what kind of shock they would have had when I told them about my US plans.

“Don’t forget you were born in a village that expects everyone to get back home before it gets dark every day. It’s non-negotiable here. We shouldn’t have allowed you to go to Bangalore. Had we done that we could have prevented all these. Why do you torture us like this? Kill us both and then you go wherever you want to go.” Mom created a big scene.

“I am not going to die there, mom. Just six months.” I am her son. I screamed, cried and begged too.

Finally, I convinced them both with an assurance that I would be back in six months with a suitcase full of American dollars. My mom and dad came all the way from my village to see me off. Prasanna and my parents waved their hands in the Departure gate of Bangalore airport hoping that they would come back to receive me in the Arrival gate of the same airport after six months. I boarded a Qatar Airways flight to the US on a Friday night.

The place I landed here on a Saturday evening is the Bay Area in California. It's good to be in a place where there are so many Indians. Wherever you go, you can find Indian faces. But my old habits had hardly died. I was mixing with only Tamils most of the time, and here and there a few Indians. Thanks to Prasanna. The fear of other Indians had died down. I was still not comfortable mixing with others. What if they took out their gun and shot me boom boom!

There was an African American young man in the next house. The first time I saw him in front of my house, he came to tell me something. I got so frightened, like seeing a ghost, came running into the house like lightning and slammed the door in his face. Next few days, I felt so disgusted with myself. I kept thinking I should somehow make up for this when I would meet him next.

‘That doesn't mean I should get close to him. I should keep everything within the limits. When you are in an unknown country, isn’t it better to be safe? Who knows what kind of person anyone is. Why risk?’

He didn't leave me either. Wherever he saw me he would chase me. Finally, we shook hands on a bright Summer evening and became friends.

“Hi, I’m Mike. You?”

The first thing he asked me when we started speaking like friends was, “Why were you so scared of me the other day, man? And why did you run like that?”

He looked deep into my eyes, making me inescapable from an answer.

“What if you took out a gun and shot me - boom?” I laughed.

He laughed like a child. I have to tell you this. His laughter sounds like it has an ability to cure deadly diseases. Then Mike became another Prasanna. California became another Karnataka. The same place that I thought I will never be able to like became my place for the rest of my life. This time, for the second time.

Then I got married. When my wife came, we moved to a different house. The first Saturday Mike came to our house to help us with the movement. I had told my wife a lot about Mike. Even then, on the first day, just like how I did, she also behaved very strangely with him. One could see her fear on her face.

“Hey, why are you so scared of me? I don't have a gun.” He continued, “If I had one, I would have shot this fellow that day itself.” He laughed like a child - in his typical style.

From that point, she lost all her fear for him.

***

My wife is on call with one of her well-wishers. Speaker mode.

“Hey, Is it the 9th month? How many more days? Will you be able to manage sitting there - thousands of miles away?”

“I am absolutely fine. I have Mike's wife. She's equivalent to 10 people. As long as she is there, I can plan even a dozen more kids. Even if I was in our place, surrounded by our own people, I wouldn't be this comfortable. Why should I be worried?”

Nagalapuram

2021-05-28T20:14:00.002+05:30

While entering the palace, the king turns to his chief minister Iyer, “Mr. Iyer! Do you have any details around why the Pandyas shifted their capital from Korkai to Madurai? Why did they move from Madurai to Tenkasi again? Would you be able to do some research tonight and come back to me with the details tomorrow?”

“Sure, Your Majesty! I did hear about the confusion that is bothering you these days. It’s a good idea indeed. We don’t need to do everything in one shot. We can have two capitals for now,” suggested the chief minister.

“Wow! You got to know about that as well? What sharp ears you have!”

The chief minister smiles.

***

The palace in the town has given a feeling to the people of the town that they have an illustrious history. As Nagalapuram was on the northern border of the country, the Ettayapuram King built a palace here as well. He wanted to have dual capitals initially. That’s why he built a palace here. He built a tunnel connecting the two towns as well. Someone played a spoilsport. The town that would have been one of the two capitals remained the border check-post forever. The tunnel is closed as well.

When Tirunelveli district was bifurcated into two districts in 1986, the southern part was called Tirunelveli district and the northern one Thoothukudi district. The people of Nagalapuram would have loved to call it Nagalapuram district. They strongly believe that their town has that heritage, and it deserves that attention. However, they didn’t even have a bus station at that point in time so that was their priority then. And that remains their priority to date. The next thing they are unhappy about is, their town could have been at least a Taluk capital (Taluk is an administrative subdivision within a district). Even that pride was taken away by its southern neighbor Vilathikulam. At least a union/block capital (Union/block is a sub-division within a Taluk)? Even that was taken away by its northern neighbor Pudur. There are many Pudurs in Tamil Nadu. So, each Pudur is prefixed with something, mostly a neighboring town’s name. This Pudur used to be called ‘Nagalapuram Pudur’. Suddenly they had some problem with it. They started introducing it as ‘Vilathikulam Pudur’. That’s how Nagalapuram lost everything it deserved.

There is only one thing they can do to save themselves from all these humiliations. They have to claim all their lost reputation. For that, everyone from the town should get educated well and occupy powerful seats in the government and the private sector. The town has to do everything necessary for that. When they say ‘the town’, it is not just Nagalapuram. It includes the surrounding pattis (villages) like Pallivasalpatti, Goundanpatti, Pudupatti, etc. When they say ‘the people of the town’, it is not just those who live in the town right now. It includes all the people that lived in the town in the last 400 years and their descendants, even those who left the town. A Nagalapuram man or woman is not like those from other places. As they say, you can take them out of Nagalapuram, but you can’t take Nagalapuram out of them. Wherever they are, their mind should be here, whether they have left their family here or otherwise.

Unfortunately, that love for the town has died down in the last twenty-thirty years. That’s why they are unable to claim the lost reputation now. The monthly ‘town’-hall meetings were replaced with the street meetings, which had participation from only the relevant street people, meaning only people from a particular caste. Yes, like in all other towns in India, they also had a separate street for each caste. At some point in time, they realized, divided, they will never be able to rise again. Now the ‘town’-hall meetings are back. The love for the town is back as well. Have you met people who tattoo their town name on their chest anywhere else on the plant? You can meet them here.

A lot of big resolutions were passed in the first meeting itself. A library, a police station and a college were the top three resolutions. Each one was assigned to a taskforce. Each task-force had people from all walks of lives. They included someone from public services, a politician, a businessman, and so on. Many people volunteered to donate their lands and to collect money from ‘their’ people living all over the country. Needless to say, it included people from the surrounding villages as well. They all identify themselves as people of Nagalapuram. So, no surprise! Everything moved per the plan and all three of them got done in time.

The library taskforce was headed by a businessman by name Aandi. The library was started in a rented place first. Aandi had his son Cheliyan donate his favorite books to the library on the day of inauguration in front of the entire town. Seeing that, people ran to their homes then and there and brought all their old books and donated them to the town library.

An old man from Sankaralingapuram, not very pleased with what Aandi did, said, “I never thought this was possible. This Aandi could have indicated that we could also donate old books. I would have brought a truckload from my village. Anyway, I will do that tomorrow.”

Next few days, the library received loads of books from students and their parents. Kalidasan, who goes by a different name—pen name—outside the town, became a writer, publisher and owns a bookstore as well in Chennai. He sent a truckload of books to the library.

“Who is this new fellow? Like a mushroom from yesterday’s rain!”

Some rich people didn’t like his sudden popularity and donated more truckloads of books to beat his record. Now the rented place was not enough to house all the books.

The entire town met the MLA (Member of Legislative Assembly). They gave a petition requesting for the police station and college. He took them all to the minister, who is in charge of the district. The minister got an appointment with the chief minister for three people from the town. After a lot of infighting, they decided to send Aandi from the town, a journalist from Pallivasalpatti, and a retired police officer from Pudupatti. Now both the police station and college are functional in temporary buildings.

Now the town is waiting for the right time to raise its voice to shift the union/block capital from Pudur to here, then the Taluk capital in the medium term and then district capital in the long term. That’s the plan. They wouldn’t be content even if it is made the state capital or the national capital. They are that greedy when it comes to their town’s pride.

***

Cheliyan did his BE (Bachelor of Engineering) in Computer Science and then did his MBA in Information Technology. He is the first-generation graduate in his family.

Aandi’s words of wisdom still ring in his head: “We can’t claim our town’s rightful place only by planting our people in politics, administration and in traditional businesses. We need to have someone big – really big – in the private sector. Someone like Tata or Birla. They are the ones who can change maps. They can attract industries to whichever place they like. They can dictate terms to governments. We need someone like that from our town.” He turned to Cheliyan and asked, “Can you be that tycoon one day?”

Cheliyan just smiled and said, “Why not?”

Here he is. He went to Bangalore just after his MBA, joined a small company, became the CEO’s pet within a short period of time, went abroad, became big, came back to India and founded his own company in Chennai. He used his global contacts to grow very quickly. His company became one of the top 5 technology companies in India.

He once made a charged statement in the press: “I regret my decision to start this company in Chennai. I could have easily chosen Bangalore. That is the city that gave me everything. I have most of my well-wishers out there. I still chose Chennai because it’s so difficult for me to not love Chennai. I feel at home here. It’s because of my love for this land, I did what I did. But I am finding it increasingly difficult to run my business here. It’s become too corrupt to do any business here. For everything, they want money. We are considering moving the headquarters to Bangalore soon.”

Next morning, the chief minister of Tamil Nadu met him in his Adyar residence, and they both released a joint statement.

“The government of Tamil Nadu will have a special committee headed by the minister of Information Technology to work with Mr. Cheliyan in the next few weeks to address all his concerns. We wouldn’t like to lose even an inch of what is our own to another state.”

With Cheliyan’s growth, his hometown Nagalapuram was becoming richer by the day as well. The young boys and girls of the town have someone to look up to – to have bigger dreams.

In another press conference recently, he said, “Managing costs is becoming increasingly difficult. Other countries are quickly catching up. Soon, countries like the Philippines and Poland would be able to supply better human resources for lesser cost. It’s time we came out with innovative solutions to keep our costs low and stay relevant in this business. TCS and Wipro have opened their development centers in Kochi, Infosys has one in Mysore, Cognizant in Coimbatore. That’s the way to go. Expanding in tier 2 cities is the answer to all our cost questions.”

His dad keeps reminding him, “Cheliya! Today, you are in a position that we all wanted to see you in. You can change the maps of any city or town. You have to keep your promise to me and our town. I saw your press conference today. Why don’t you make our town your tier 2 destination?”

People back in Nagalapuram started talking about it too.

The next day, newspapers started speculating about this.

“Is Nagalapuram, the remote small town in the down south, becoming a tech hub?”

“Is this Cheliyan’s dream come true for his hometown?”

“Who is deciding the location of the tier 2 development center in this public limited company? Is it his business colleagues or family members?”

It quickly developed into a near reality. The press and people started talking about different things the town will start seeing in the next few months, the new reality it has to get used to, a huge checklist that needs to be checked fully before realizing the dream of becoming a tech hub, and so on. The real estate investments poured in. The roads quickly became better. The minister in charge of the district kept visiting the place often.

Cheliyan travels all around the world all through the year. But the third week of January, when Tamil Nadu celebrates Pongal, he is in his hometown. He has managed to do this all his life except for one year due to a really unavoidable situation. This Pongal week, he is there. He is not reachable to his colleagues and clients during this one week. He read a lot about what was going on back in his hometown all this while. Witnessing it first-hand felt different.

The dusty street that he grew up on has changed completely with the new cement roads. He grew up playing Kabaddi and Cricket in that street, which is ruled out now. It’s totally a different street now. It looks like a European street. He used to think in his childhood if his town would ever become a posh town like the ones that he reads about in English novels. That has become a reality now.

‘This is what I dreamt all my life. It’s a reality now. But, do I like this change? Hasn’t my street lost its charm with all these changes?”

Like everyone else he woke up earlier than usual on Pongal day. He took a shower, wore his traditional dhoti and came out to see the kolams (decorative art drawn on the ground) drawn in front of each house. It’s a treat to watch. This year, he could see a lot of media people with cameras in his street. It’s not that he is shy of the media or camera. But somehow, he is not able to enjoy this attention. This is his street. He grew up here. Nobody cared what he did here all this while. Suddenly not just him, his entire town was getting this unwanted attention. He just walked a few blocks with his brother and got back home. The kolams looked different on the cement floors than the muddy ground. They looked better. But something was missing.

On ‘Kaanum Pongal’ day, two days after Pongal, he goes to all his relatives’ and friends’ house to meet them and catch up on things that he missed in the last one year. This time, he went to Kannan's house first. Kannan's uncle welcomed him with his typical big smile.

“Thanks to the hype created by you. The real estate price has suddenly gone up like crazy here. Next Pongal, most people in this street would have moved out of this street. They are getting chased out. Not literally. They are being offered irresistible prices to their houses and lands, so nobody wants to miss this opportunity. People want to make hay while the sun shines. You are the sun! But I am not going to sell. This is the house we have been living in for many generations,” he sounded a bit frustrated too.

When he walked out of Kannan's house too, there were media people with their cameras. He just ignored them all – it’s not very difficult for him to ignore them like that – got into the car and got back home.

“Dad! Isn’t this what we all wanted all these years? But I have started wondering if our town really needs this growth. I am even thinking if this is what real growth is.”

***

It’s that much-awaited press conference. Cheliyan’s press conferences are always fun to watch. When he speaks everyone listens – both inside the company and outside. It’s a public limited company, but it’s still run like a private limited one. When one person has more than 70% stakes how else would it be run! He came in an unusual attire this time. He was wearing a white and white dhoti and shirt with a white towel around his shoulders.

“Wow! Here is a CEO of one of the top 5 technology companies in India, dressed like a Tamil politician… That makes it very easy for us to guess what he is going to announce today. Let’s go back to our correspondent in Nagalapuram, capturing the mood of the small town where this hero was born and grew up – the town that is being talked about a lot in the last few months. Yes, let’s hear the talk of the town from the horses’ mouth…” yelled a press lady straight into the camera.

“Yes. We are very happy and proud of him. He is our pride. He is going to put our town on the world technology map today. We are all eagerly waiting for the announcement,” a middle-aged man enjoyed his bite to the national television.

Attention quickly shifted to the Chennai press conference:

“We have been operating out of just one city in Tamil Nadu. As a growing organization with a promising future, we need to think beyond Chennai. So, here you go. I am thrilled to announce the second development center that is going to be operational in 2 years from now. We are going to add another dot to the world technology map. Do you know where it is going to be? Yes, you are close. The second development center of this futuristic technology giant is going to be in the erstwhile capital of the Pandya kingdom. Yes, it’s the historical Madurai. If everything goes fine, it could become our headquarters as well, sometime in future.”

***

When I Don't Like Somone

2021-05-21T20:13:00.002+05:30

“When I don’t like someone, I don’t like to see them ever again in my life. That’s how I am. That’s how I would ever be. That’s how everyone should be. How can people smile at each other knowing that they hate each other? I am not used to this culture.”

“Why do you have to be so stubborn? We are all human beings. Everyone makes mistakes. You make mistakes. I make mistakes. What’s the point in being in denial about it?”

***

I must be seven or eight years old then. I still remember this conversation with dad.

“Dad, whom do you like the most in this world?”

“Anbu uncle,” he said.

Anbu uncle is not his uncle. He is my uncle. That’s how dad used to talk about everyone with me. He would say uncle if they were uncle to me, he would say aunty if they were aunty to me, and so on. Anbu uncle is dad’s only brother. Younger brother.

“Will you do anything for him?”

“Yes.”

***

It was early morning. Like 7 o’clock. We were just waking up. Dad was in his usual chair reading his favorite newspaper held in his left hand, keeping the coffee cup in his right hand. Anbu uncle was standing in front of him wiping his face every now and then with the white towel he had.

“Get lost. I don’t want to see your face ever again,” dad shouted at Anbu uncle.

“I am telling you again. You keep making this mistake,” Anbu uncle tried to explain his reasons.

Dad was not in a mood to listen to him.

He screamed, “I said, get lost. I don’t want to listen to any of your stories.”

He abruptly stood up and went into the house. Anbu uncle left the place with his head down. Dad never met him again until grandma’s death.

“I will finish my rituals first. Let him go next. We are not doing it together. Period,” dad was extremely adamant about it. Some old people tried to talk him into it. But nobody succeeded. Everyone left the place humiliated and frustrated.

“I have never met an arrogant fellow like this in my life,” murmured an old man, who is dad’s godfather-like figure.

“Adamant idiot,” mumbled another old man, dad’s favorite uncle.

Finally, everything happened as dad wished. He finished his rituals with mom and us. We went out of the house. Only then were Anbu uncle and his family allowed inside to perform their rituals separately. It would have all been a combined ritual otherwise.

Mom was covering her mouth with her saree tip and weeping. Everyone knew it was not for grandma’s death she was crying so much.

***

My maternal side isn’t any better. My cousins Arul and Kani are like the ideal siblings – always fighting but can’t miss each other for even a minute. Every long vacation, either they would be in our house or we (my sister Kayal and I) would be in theirs.

Kanmani aunty would always say, “Look at them. That’s how siblings should be. Never has there been a day when he hasn’t hit you or you haven’t cried. Why do you Satans create so much scene?”

But Kayal and I were always jealous of Arul and Kani. They both know that. Aunty also knows that. We have tried to copy them. It never worked. Kayal is too nice to hit. Moreover, she is under pressure to be nice with me because she is the elder sister. Arul never seems to have or feel that pressure with Kani.

This summer vacation, when we went to their house, we could sense the difference right in the first minute. Aunty never told us anything about it. When Arul was in the living room, Kani would never come there and vice versa. For some reason, they stopped speaking with each other.

Kayal and I asked aunty about it. “Aunty, what happened? Why aren’t they speaking with each other?”

She just said, “You ask them only. Only after that has the house become calm.”

Kayal and I tried different techniques to make them friends again.

“Hey Arul, Kani is calling you.”

“Hey Kani, Arul is asking if you are game for a movie tomorrow.”

We got only a stare as the response.

Kayal tried this, “Shall we try Nagalapuram vs. Madurai carrom? I bet Madurai city can’t beat Nagalapuram village in this. What say?”

Kayal and I represented Nagalapuram and Arul and Kani Madurai.

Arul said coldly, “Try something else.”

I got smart and said, “How about boys vs. girls? You shouldn’t have any problem with that. You don’t have to speak with each other.”

This suggestion didn’t even deserve his answer. He just shook his head with a bit of irritation and left the place. Both of us stopped trying these techniques with them from then on. After that, they were in our house, and we were in their house for many vacations. But we never saw them speak to each other again.

***

Selva and I studied together in the same school from first grade to twelfth grade. Some years we were in the same class and in others different classes though the same grade. Invariably during every recess and lunch break, either Selva would come running to my class or I would go to his during those years when we were in different classes. It’s because of this, I never made any friends outside of him. Neither did he.

Most evenings, within half an hour of reaching home, either he would be in my house, or I would be in his. Likewise, on the weekends and holidays. The first thing both of us would work towards was meeting each other, which would happen before 10am or so. When I played Cricket, he played Cricket. When he played Kabaddi, I played Kabaddi. When one of us didn’t like something, the other one also stopped liking that thing. In that small town, he was the only one to travel with me for that long. Everyone else joined in between or left in between.

This happened during the summer vacation after the twelfth-grade exam. I don’t remember why it happened. It must be for something very silly. We stopped speaking with each other. The world turned upside down for me. I didn’t know what to do in the evenings, on the weekends and on long vacations when we didn’t go elsewhere. I am sure he would have gone through the same thing as well. But neither of us ever made an attempt to become friends again.

Arul asked me, “What happened to Selva? Missing in action for some time now!”

I wore a fake smile and told him, “Same thing that happened between you and Kani!”

He is a gentle-boy. He just said, “Oh!” and stopped speaking about Selva with me ever again. I know he met Selva many times after that. This is not Madurai. It’s a small town where you can never miss anyone even if you stay there for a few days. But he never talked about Selva with me again. I am sure he wouldn’t have spoken to him about me either. A guy with his own principles.

Mom asked me many times in different words: “What happened to Selva?”, “What happened with Selva?”, “Did you have a fight?”

I always ducked it with different answers and questions: “I don’t know”, “Ask him”, “What’s your problem?”

Then this day came. I had to give her a longer answer.

“You are getting married first. If it was him, he would have definitely invited you. I don’t think what you are doing is right. This is your last chance to mend your relationship. If you don’t do it now, you will never be able to fix it. I am your mom. I am telling you. You will regret your adamance. Don’t do this.”

“Thanks for your advice. But I don’t need it. No problem. I will face the consequences. You don’t have to worry about it.”

***

My goodness! Why did I meet him first on the first day of college? Just because he was the first one to meet there, he became my first friend in college only to become the worst enemy very quickly.

“Hi, my name is Kathir. Computer Science.”

“Nice meeting you. I am Computer Science too.”

“You are computer science? Hahaha,” he laughed like an idiot.

I should have started hating him from this minute. Unfortunately, I laughed with him then and said politely, “No no. I meant…”

I thought he was an outgoing guy, and I might like him. Unfortunately, he turned out to be an… leave it. Just thinking about him raises my blood pressure.

I don’t hate people for no reason. Just that some people do something annoying and get into that list while others are so annoying even when they don’t do anything specific. It could be because anything and everything they do is annoying. Kathir became one such fellow.

“Hey buddy! How are you?”

“How are you, my dear friend?”

“What’s up, dude?”

These are the different questions he has asked me with a lot of energy, and an infectious one at that, mostly in the café or on the playground or in a place where both of us are with our friends. The response he got was always a silent stare or a royal ignore. He is so shameless. I don’t think he ever felt humiliated by all that. If so, he wouldn’t have tried again.

One of those days in the café, Kannan asked me, “What did he do to you? Why do you keep doing this to him? Why don’t you just say ‘fine’ for namesake?”

I said, “I won’t. That’s me. If I don’t like someone, this is what they would get from me.”

“No, man. Life is short. Make it sweet. It’s not worth hating people like this.”

This is his usual style. He makes everything sound like a philosophy. So, nobody cares what he says. Hehe.

***

“I don’t want to talk to you. Don’t talk to me. Why didn’t you tell me then?”

I have never seen her this angry. It’s an unnecessary scene in front of so many people. This is the first ever fight I am getting into with her. I never thought this day would come this quickly. All the jokes I heard about Mars-Venus fights aren't as light as they portray them to be. No. I can’t handle this. This is not what I prepared all my life for.

“You sure? Don’t want to talk to me? You don’t know me well enough. I’ll give you 5 more minutes. Think about it and tell me. If you say ‘done’, it means it’s done. That’s it.”

She is crying. OMG. So much tears! Where does she get all these tears from? No, I can’t stand this.

I couldn’t resist myself from screaming, “Will you please stop creating a scene in front of everyone? What happened now? What did I hide from you? You are making a mountain out of nothing. I can’t deal with this. Goodbye.”

Everyone around us is looking at us.

“I hate you. Get lost,” she screams.

“Thank you. I hate you too. You don’t know what I do when I start hating people. I will never see your face again. Bye.”

I walk away from there. She starts weeping more. I don’t care. I am done.

Three steps away. No, I am not done. I do care. I am an idiot. I go back to her, hold both her shoulders with both my hands and start begging her to forgive me. It’s not going to be easy. But I have to do this. I created this mess.

Wow! I did it. It’s easy! When I don’t like someone, no… it’s not the end of the world. I don’t have to hate them. I don’t have to end the relationship. I can still make it work. This is a different feeling. I like it. I like myself. Wow!

Lost and Found

2021-05-14T20:12:00.001+05:30

Lost and Found

This is not the first time they are coming to Madurai. Most of their relatives are here. So, they keep coming here every now and then. Most times, Muthu’s dad comes alone for family events like weddings, births and deaths. Sometimes, his mom also joins his dad if it is in a closer relative’s house. Once in a year or so, all of them come together if it is in a very close relative’s house.

Last time, they came here six months back for Alagar uncle’s wedding. Muthu was not even three years old at that time. He wouldn’t remember anything from that visit. For his parents, this visit is different from the regular visits to the city as everything looks different during this time. When they come here other times, the buses come till the ‘Periyar Bus Station’, which is in the heart of the city. Is it really the heart of the city? Can’t say. Like all Indian cities, Madurai has many hearts too. Anything other than the outskirts is the heart.

During this time, the buses are stopped 5 kilometers before the city limits. So, Muthu and his parents get down there and have to walk all the way till Simmakkal, which is another heart of the city on the bank of river Vaigai, where Alagar uncle and most of their relatives live.

The walk is not that difficult because the entire stretch is full of makeshift shops and a lot of activities. There is a huge circus tent. They have written ‘Bombay Circus’ in both Tamil and English. Muthu couldn’t read either of them. Neither does his dad or mom. There are exhibitions, giant wheels and a lot of attractive sights on the way.

Muthu is thrilled seeing all of them. As far as his memory goes, this is the first time he is seeing all these in his life. He has seen this twice in the past. But he won’t know because he is just three years old now. Sometimes, he is walking on his own holding his dad’s hands and other times his dad carries him on his shoulders. Every kid has something or the other toy in their hand. So, Muthu also wants something now. He cries showing a flute in another boy’s hand. His dad immediately buys him one. He doesn’t do that all the time. He is in a good mood today. Muthu stops crying and starts walking on his own from this point. Just that he is not able to walk as fast as his parents do. So, they have to walk slower for him.

Every ‘Chithirai Festival’, Muthu’s family would be in Alagar uncle’s house without fail. The ‘Chithirai Festival’ in Madurai is not just Madurai’s festival. It’s the entire southern Tamil Nadu’s festival. ‘Chithirai’ is the first month in the Tamil calendar. The festival is celebrated during the entire month of ‘Chithirai’. The peak of the celebrations is the wedding of Lord Meenakshi with Lord Shiva and Lord Alagar’s (Vishnu) travel to Madurai for the wedding.

When Lord Alagar’s chariot enters the city limits, thousands of people gather around it and they follow him until he reaches the bank of river Vaigai to hear that the wedding already took place even before he reached, and he heads back to his place in anger for not waiting for him. Stopping in multiple places on the way and reaching the wedding venue late is actually his mistake. But as the brother of the bride, he expected everyone to have waited for his arrival. He gets angry because nobody cared. This is an enactment that happens every year. This is the scene that the entire South Tamil Nadu gathers in Madurai to witness every year. Muthu and his family are one of the many thousand families that have come to watch it this year like many years in the past.

When they reach Alagar uncle’s house, everyone is ready in their new clothes to go and receive Lord Alagar. As soon as they see Muthu and his parents, some of them are excited and happy while others are impatient to leave as soon as they can.

“Come, come. How long? It’s almost time. Hurry. Let’s go fast. It will take another half an hour in this crowd,” hurries Alagar uncle.

“Hey ladies, take care of all the girl children. Gents, you guys should take care of all boy children,” instructs Alagar uncle’s dad Perumal thatha.

“So, uncle, you will take care of your son?” asks Alagar uncle’s new wife Munima aunty.

“Hahaha,” everyone laughs at the joke.

The tension in the crowd eases. Still people who are walking fast on the front turn back every now and then and hurry the laggards to walk faster. “Quick, quick. Don’t walk like a swan.”

15 minutes into the long walk, Muthu’s dad starts shouting, “Hey, Muthu! Where are you? Muthu! Muthu! Muthu!”

No answer.

People in the group get tense and they also go in all directions looking for Muthu.

“Muthu! Muthu! Muthu!” They shout this name many thousand times. Still no use. No answer.

Every ‘Chithirai Festival’, a number of kids are lost in the crowd and most of them are found generally. The police keep announcing about missing children with identifications on the mic. People who find such kids bring them to the police station and hand them over to the police. The police then announce the found children with their names and/or identifications on the mic. The parents would come and collect their lost kids. They announce about kids lost and found throughout the city in all police stations. So mostly no kid is lost forever. There have been stories of rich people not having children adopting such lost kids. But that’s not that common.

Muthu’s dad goes to the nearby police station and complains, “Sir, I lost my three-year-old son. His name is Muthu. Please help me find him, sir.” He cries like a baby begging them with folded hands.

The police officer shouts at him, “Aren’t you responsible enough? Where did you lose him? What color clothes was he wearing? Would he be able to tell his name? Would he be able to tell your name? Where are you from?”

“I doubt, sir. He started speaking very late. Even now he struggles to say his name. Will I get him, sir? Please sir. Help me, sir. I am a poor man. I don’t know how to find him, sir.” His tears wouldn’t stop.

Muthu’s parents stay there in Alagar uncle’s house for many days and search in every nook and corner of the city. No use. They come back to their village empty handed. The family that went as a three-member family comes back as a two-member family after the festivals!

Muthu’s mom cries, cries, and cries for days, months and years after that. She never hears about Muthu after that.

30 years later…

Muthu’s native place Boothalapuram is 4 hours away from Madurai. 95 kilometers used to take 4 hours by bus those days. It is 13 kilometers away from Nagalapuram, a lively small town in the region.

Mookkan’s entire clan reaches Nagalapuram tonight. When they find a town like Nagalapuram, they stay there for a few months and feed their families by making use of the resources they are able to access during those few months. When they get bored, they leave the place and find another Nagalapuram.

Mookkan has two wives and 12 kids. He is the head of the clan now. His dad died a few years back when they were roaming around near Chennai. After that he took over the reins. He was named ‘Chappai Mookkan’, which means ‘flat nose guy’. That got shortened to ‘Mookkan’ later.

Unlike the immobile people, his ‘kuravar’ tribe doesn’t have too much trouble naming their kids. They just go by some of the features of the baby. If the baby is a boy and light skinned, they name him ‘Vellaiyan’, which means ‘white guy’. If it is a girl, ‘Vellachi’, which means ‘white girl’. Likewise, if the baby is short, ‘Kattaiyan’ or ‘Kattachi’ (short guy or short girl). If the baby keeps crying, ‘Aluvaan’ or ‘Aluvayi’ (cry boy or cry girl). There are even names like bus, bullock cart, flood, etc. It all depends on what happened when the baby was born or whatever verb or noun comes to the head of the clan’s mind at that point in time.

In the last 40-50 years, Mookkan has gone to almost all parts of Tamil Nadu. Actually, he is not even 35 yet. But he feels like 50 because he looks like 50 and nobody in his clan has any sense of time. He felt something different about Nagalapuram. He has seen this place in a different form. Yes, he has seen every city, town and village in the 100,000 square kilometers area in Tamil Nadu and the neighboring states. But this place is different. He remembers something from this place. Very vaguely.

Yes, it is Muthu’s Nagalapuram. Yes, Mookkan is Muthu.

He started behaving strangely of late. The men and women in his clan started noticing that. The road that went eastwards from Nagalapuram looked familiar. He walked for 2-3 hours on the east. As he walked more and more east, he found it more and more familiar. Finally, he reached Boothalapuram. Something ran in his body. He rewound everything back by 40-50 years (30 years only actually). He connected the dots. Very vaguely.

‘Why did I not think about this all these years? What brought me here now? Have I found my real parents then?’

‘It is the same lake, same banyan tree, same village… Everything looks much smaller than it was 40-50 years ago. Yes, it is a straight road from this temple. Yes, that is my house. Yes, that is my mom.’

‘Amma! I found you. I found myself.’

He goes near the house and asks his mom, “Amma! I am feeling very thirsty. Can you give me some water please?”

She goes in and gets him some water. He looks around and tries to dig out some memories in the meanwhile. There are a lot of them coming out from deep within, but nothing clear.

He wanted to tell her she found her son after 40-50 years. He wanted to know where his dad was. He wanted to know about his relatives in the city, especially Alagar uncle, but doesn’t remember his name.

“Amma! Where is Ayya?”

“What do you want? Why are you asking about him?”

“I know him very well, ma. Where is he?”

“Are you mad? He died many years ago.”

He doesn’t want to continue this conversation. He just says, “Okay ma. Sorry. Bye!” and leaves the place immediately.

He comes back to Nagalapuram that night. Everyone in his clan is waiting for him in their tents that they set up on the shores of the Vannikulam lake. It’s a dark new moon night. It is around 9pm. He narrates to his clan the entire story of getting lost, getting adopted by the clan and finding his real mom after 40-50 years. Nobody believes him. But there is one person who believes it. She is a living witness. She doesn’t say a word. He knows that she knows everything. She knows that he has finally found it. They never thought this would happen one day. It has happened now. What next?

Next morning, he woke up earlier than usual.

“Hey, everyone! We are going to shift our base to a nearby village today. The village that I was talking about last night. We will come back to this place again. But let’s go to my place today.”

“What? Your place, eh? None of us have any place of our own. Wherever we are that day, that’s our place. Today we are here. So, this is our place. Why do you suddenly talk like the immobile people? Something is going wrong with you of late!” says his first wife.

“Come with me and see my mom today. Then talk.”

Some of them look at his mom. She looks as though she has all the answers, but she is not in a mood to talk about anything.

Mid-day, the entire clan reaches Boothalapuram village. They set up their tents near the village lake first. Then he takes the entire clan to his house to meet his mom – real mom – no, first mom.

Muthu’s mom sees him coming towards her house with his entire clan. She just ignores him and goes inside. She still feels something strange inside and looks at the entrance gate. The entire clan is standing there as she elusively expected. She feels something fishy and starts shivering. She calls someone from inside. “Hey, Muthu! Come here.”

‘What? Muthu, ah? I have heard this name. Yes, that’s my name. I used to be called by the same name. How come there is another Muthu now!’

“Amma! We are feeling very thirsty. Can we get some water?”

“No, no. No water here. Go, go.”

“Amma! How many kids do you have?”

Muthu, the new Muthu, shows up now.

“Hey, man! What’s your problem? Every time you come here, you seem to be interested in something that is not related to your business,” the lady shoots back angrily.

“Amma! Tell me. There is a reason why I ask you this question. Please tell me.”

This minute, the lady’s face pales. “What reason? Only one son. Muthu!”

“You had another Muthu?”

This shocks the other Muthu as well.

“Ammaaa!” he cried aloud, “I am that Muthu ma!”

“What? Ayyo! Yes, he looks like my son. Same nose.” Oh, no, this lady is going to faint now. “Hey, Muthu! I am going to faint now. He came back. Oh, my God. I don’t believe this. He is your elder brother, my son. He is the one. He is the one. Ask him where he was all these years. How did he find it now?” She just sits there keeping both her hands on her head. She cries uncontrollably for hours together. She picks up from the ‘Chithirai Festival’ episode 30 years back and continues weeping in the same rhythm.

Now Mookkan also cries endlessly.

It infects Mookkan’s mom next. “Amma! This is your son. Take him back. I don’t want him. He is the head of our clan. I will keep his wives and kids with me. I will make his eldest son the head of my clan. You take this fellow. He doesn’t belong to us.”

Now the other Muthu is absolutely puzzled. “Amma! These guys eat everything. How do we integrate him into our family? OK. We can accept him. How about his wives and kids? Will they leave him? If your son is important to you, what about his sons and daughters to him? What do we do with them? I am going mad right now.”

While all this drama is unfolding, the villagers gather in front of the house slowly. They understand what is going on based on the comments made by the senior people who know what happened 30 years back.

No one is able to take control of the situation. There are only crying faces and puzzled faces. No one has a solution to the riddle. A mom has found her lost son after 30 years. Shouldn’t it be a moment of joy? No, it clearly isn’t.

Muthu alias Mookkan stands up and delivers his verdict: “See, I found my lost mom after 40-50 years. But this lady is my real mom. She is the one who took care of me all these years. Her husband was my dad. He is no more. So is my first dad. Maybe I was born here. But I was raised as a ‘kuravan’. I would like to remain one and die as one. All I would request my first mom and my brother is this. I will just come here once a year. I will spend a whole day with you guys. You needn’t even allow me inside your house. I will just stay here. You treat me with your food. I would like to bring my entire clan. If you have a problem with that, I can come alone. I will come on ‘Chithirai Festival’ day every year and go back the next day. I will do this until this poor lady is alive. Maybe for the next 10 years. If I am 50, she must be 70. How long would she live?”

“Hey, idiot. You are not 50. You are just 35. I am 58,” she corrects him immediately.

“Oh, okay. Then another 20-30 years!” he smiles.

Muthu’s brother Muthu is not out of the shock yet.

#WWWLeaks

2021-05-08T20:11:00.002+05:30

It is 6:06 AM in Los Altos Hills, California. The sun is rising, swallowing the night's darkness and the thin 16% moonlight — four days from the new moon.

The CEO of the world's most powerful technology company sits in his night clothes, staring at a number that is climbing faster than any number he has ever tracked. Till last night he was watching COVID deaths. He is not watching those anymore.

The suicide counter reads 33,000 in the last three hours alone.

He knows the caveats — the algorithm, the underreporting, the countries that have never been able to count their dead accurately. But even discounting all of that, the number is unlike anything human history has produced in peacetime. People are announcing it on social media before they do it. Some are livestreaming it. Strangely, the content moderation teams are not taking it down. Maybe they can't keep up. Maybe some of them are no longer at their desks.

A video surfaces from a content moderator at one of the social media companies' Phoenix facilities. His final message to the world:

"I would have done this someday anyway. This just expedited my decision and reaffirmed my disbelief in this world!"

The comments below the video are what frightens him most. Not the anger. The agreement.

It is not only suicides. Spouses are killing partners. Partners are killing themselves before they can be caught. In the United States, the firearms numbers are the highest. Mass shootings are being reported in seven states.

#shootingthecatcher is trending on Twitter.

"Crazy idiots. You kill yourself or kill your partner who will come for you. Why do you kill innocent people on the street for your own problems?" — under #massshooting, trending with forty million impressions and climbing.

The CEO knows why the COVID numbers started looking better last week. It was never a real improvement. The world's attention had simply moved to something larger. Somewhere, he notices, the same dashboard templates are being repurposed — the same color coding, the same county-by-county breakdowns — now tracking a different catastrophe.

He types. He has never asked anything of his followers before. Not like this.

"Guys, this is not the end of the world. We have survived deadlier catastrophes and come out stronger. Please don't end your lives for this. We are all in this together. We will come out of it together. Please listen to me. You will thank me for this later."

Nine million retweets. Twenty-one million likes. Both records in Twitter's history.

He is not on any other platform. He considers them junk — architecturally dishonest, built on surveillance, sustained by engagement-at-any-cost. He has a particular contempt for one CEO in that world, someone he regards as having built an empire on the ruins of private life. "What moral standards can you expect from an app built by someone with zero values?" he has said, in rooms he believed were private.

His phone rings. It is that CEO.

"Hey. What do we do? Shall we shut the whole thing down until we figure this out? An e-lockdown. That's the only answer."

"Shut down the internet? Are you serious? Technology got us into this — but it's also the only thing helping us manage it. Switching it off kills more people than it saves. Get the president on a call. This is a war against humanity. It is not a technology problem anymore."

It happened at 3:00 AM Pacific Standard Time.

No one has claimed responsibility. The theories are already multiplying. A Chinese state actor. A Russian intelligence operation. Someone in Hawaii — because it was midnight there, and 12 AM felt like the kind of time someone would choose for something this large.

The Bay Area engineers, however, suspect something closer to home. An insider.

"If all they wanted was money, they would have targeted only the rich. The motive here is something larger than life." — a celebrity with forty million followers.

"Or something much sillier than any of us can imagine." — an account with eleven followers.

What happened, exactly?

At 3:00 AM, something broke inside the architecture of the internet — or was broken — in a way that no one has explained yet. Every search query stopped returning search results. Instead, it returned data. Not random data.

The most unforgettable data. What people had hidden from themselves. What others had hidden from them. What the world's most powerful institutions had hidden from everyone.

The things people most needed to forget. The things most true about them that they most wanted to be false. And the secrets kept not by them but for them — or against them — by others.

A man in Atlanta asks his phone, "Hey Siri, how is the weather?" He receives, at the top of the search results, an email he sent to an ex-girlfriend more than a decade ago. An email he deleted. From an account he closed. The word "weather" does not appear anywhere in it. He tweets about it because that is, apparently, what people do when they are shaken — they tell strangers.

A man named Kavin in Chennai searches for "thalaivar" at 3:30 PM local time. What returns is a PDF attachment from an HR email sent by the IT department of his first company, in his second month, the week before he was fired. It is his own browsing history. He had spent years trying to forget that chapter. He deleted that email account before his next job interview.

And then there is Olivia in London.

Olivia searches for the top ten albums of the year at 11:00 AM. What appears on her screen is not a music chart. It is her boyfriend Arthur's chat history — every conversation with every girlfriend he has had since secondary school, organized chronologically, annotated with photographs. She calls him immediately. His line is busy. It has been busy for forty minutes.

"It's not my chat history showing on my screen. It's his," she tells the colleague sitting next to her. "How is that even possible? Imagine who is reading mine right now."

Each of these people made the same discovery when they tried to search for something else immediately afterward: the results did not change. Whatever they searched for, they received the same answer — the thing they most needed not to see.

The technology forums are alive.

"I can't wait to understand how this was done. It's not just email — it's chat history, search history, browsing history, all of it. This is not an accidental leak. Someone designed this. But what is the algorithm? And what is the motivation?"

"Also the things that others kept from us. And the things we kept from others."

"The man who did this could be in this forum right now."

"How do you know it was one man?"

"How do you know it was a man?"

"How do you know it wasn't a government?"

"The most terroristic governments are the democratically elected ones."

"This is not a political forum. We are here to solve the world's biggest technology problems."

"That is exactly what we are doing."

Louisiana

"Who is Emma?"

"I don't know."

"You have exchanged more than 300,000 words with her."

"You don't need to know."

"First you said you don't know. Now you say I don't need to know. I need to know. Tell me where she is."

"You won't need to know."

"If you don't tell me, I will kill myself."

"You don't need to do that. I will do that for you."

Poomb.

Nevada

"You told me everything."

"Yes."

"No, you didn't. Who is Bill?"

"You don't want to know."

"I do want to know."

"I don't have to tell you."

"You do. Otherwise —"

"Otherwise —"

Poomb.

California

"Why didn't you tell me before?"

"We were going to. When the time was right."

"When was the right time going to come? After you both died?"

"We don't care where our real son is. You have been our son for eighteen years. You will always be our son."

"You don't care about your son. I care about my parents. I want to know where they are."

Aditya walked out of the room and did not come back that evening. His parents sat at the kitchen table for a long time, not speaking. Whatever they said, and they said a great deal, was not enough to fill what had opened up in him.

"WikiLeaks is nothing. What you are witnessing today is the mother of all leaks in human history. #WWWLeaks"

"We thought they were a technology company. They have been an intelligence agency. 99% of their own employees don't know this yet. #WWWLeaks"

"Two of the biggest banks in the world rigged the global financial system together. Here is the text thread. #WWWLeaks"

"How two pharma giants we believed were competitors colluded to keep the world in a permanent state of treatable but uncured disease. #WWWLeaks"

Boards are convening. With COVID restrictions still in place, they meet virtually — aware, now, that virtual meetings are not private. That nothing is private. Deciding, in the end, that there is nothing left to protect, so they may as well proceed. CEOs are being sacked by boards. Deputies are being sacked by CEOs. Some leaders are tweeting that their physical safety is at risk. Several nuclear secrets are now publicly known in at least forty countries.

"PEOPLE. PLEASE USE DISCRETION. NOT EVERYTHING YOU ARE READING IS TRUE. HACKERS AND CONSPIRACY THEORISTS ARE USING THIS MOMENT TO SPREAD LIES. #WWWLeaks" — the most powerful person on the planet.

The reply with the most likes:

"So you're confirming that some of it is true?"

No response.

"Today's Tarot card for the world is DEATH — in an upright position. It doesn't mean what you think. It doesn't mean the end. It means we must start everything over again. It is the death of life as it was until today. Tomorrow has to be a new day and a new life. #WWWLeaks"

Nila is thirteen years old. She lives in a village in South India. Last year, NASA's Administrator wrote her a letter acknowledging her observations on astrophysics. Today she tweets something that gets more attention than she expected:

"Check this. Every piece of data leaked today belongs to mature democracies with sophisticated data protection laws. I don't see any data from authoritarian regimes. Something to think about. #WWWLeaks"

The reply with the second-most likes:

"That means our nuclear secrets are now theirs. And theirs are still theirs."

It is 8:01 PM in Los Altos Hills, California. The sun has set in the west. The darkness is returning — not total darkness, a waning crescent with 10% light, enough to see by if you know where to look.

Tomorrow there will be a sunrise again. In the east. At exactly 6:06 AM.

Go Back To Your Place

2021-04-30T20:09:00.001+05:30

March 11, 2020 Wednesday 6:01 PM

Most books jumped off the shelves and came to the Center Hall. A few of them were still tired and sleepy to move around.

“This is our land. It has always been our land time immemorial,” shouted a thick book.

“Yesss,” shouted back thousands of other books in unison, and their words echoed through the library.

“Yes, it has been our land since the very first day we came here. CDs only arrived recently. But that doesn’t make us superior to them,” retaliated another thick book.

“No. You don’t speak like a book. Maybe you were born to a CD. This is our land and ours only. Libraries are meant to be for books. There are video libraries for CDs. Let them be there. We have no problem with that. When they try to make this their place, we can’t allow that. We can’t just sit there and watch this happen,” passionately spoke a worn and thin book.

“No. He was not born to a CD. He gave birth to a CD. His son is popular among audiobooks. We have no problem with his love for his son. If he wants us to consider his son as one of us, we can think about it. For that matter, we are okay to consider citizenship for all audiobooks, but certainly not all CDs,” said a book with a long title.

“No. I don’t agree with that. He can choose to be in the library if he wants to. His son will never be considered a book. An audiobook is an audiobook. Audiobooks have no place in the library. If anyone wants to be with their son or daughter, it’s their choice. We won’t stop them. But that’s not going to be in this land. You’ll have to find a different place. I will give my life to save this land from outsiders and even those who support outsiders,” roared a hardcover book.

A lone CD was walking near the librarian’s counter, a few meters away from Center Hall where this meeting was taking place.

A paperback accidentally turned away and spotted this CD walking around searching for something. “Look there. Speak of the devil, and there is a young devil.”

A politics book yelled, “Go back to your place!”

A few more joined in now, “Go back to your place.” It resounded in all corners of the library, not loud enough though.

A good number of them howled, “Go back to your place.” Now, this one really echoed well enough to wake up the lazy books still stuck inside the shelves and the CDs in far away shelves.

Some of the new CDs shivered.

A long timer CD said consolingly, “Not all books are like this. It’s only some of them. They have their own reasons to hate us. I can understand that. But that doesn’t justify this behaviour though. I can assure you guys one thing. They are really civilized chaps. Most of them would go to any extent to ensure we are safe in their place. It’s because of them we all love this land. This library is far better than many other libraries I have been to. It’s better than our own land. I have seen CDs harassing the minority DVDs in video libraries. This is nothing compared to that. This is just a phase. We will get through this.”

A CD with a beautiful plastic cover, “What nonsense are you talking about? This is barbarism. We CDs are so civilized. We don’t harass DVDs or anyone else. We have a clean history of treating others with respect and dignity unlike these books. Do you know what all these books have done in the past? They have blood in their inner cover. You should know history before you talk about anything. What else can I expect from a thankless CD!”

The long timer CD’s face changed. It put its head down and slowly walked away from the place.

“Dude, I don’t agree with you. Those DVDs have to be kept in their place. They spoil the place wherever they go. And, if it continues like this, one day the number of DVDs will be more than CDs in the world. That’s why we beat them like that in our place. Books are actually nice ones. I like them. Especially, I like these hardliner books more. They also like us. They hate only the DVDs and some CDs. Some of them can’t even make out the difference between us and DVDs. All we need to do is to remind them that the DVDs are their real enemies and we are their friends. I am even going to join their procession this weekend to oust all illegal CDs from the library. I am a CD, but I strongly oppose the entry and presence of illegal CDs,” explained a CD with a cover that looks like a book. Let’s call him a ‘bookalike’.

The plastic cover CD replied, “Dude, I agree with you. But you should understand something. This is not our place. We can’t speak like how we would speak when we are in our land. You have to be tactful. Be politically correct when you speak something.”

“Aren’t you two faced?”

“You won’t understand this. It will be too late when you realize this. What’s wrong with being two faced? Survival is the only motto of the fittest. You stand for your group. When you are on the giving end, be with the givers. When you are on the receiving end, be with the receivers. Don’t pretend to be the giver in all situations.”

“You are smart. But I am honest to myself. I hate others in my land so I can relate to the others who hate me in their land.”

“Then why are you with them?”

“Because I support their hate!”

“Aren’t they hating you?”

“No, they will start loving me at some point in time. When they chase you all away, I will be the last one to be chased or I might get accepted as one of them.”

“Because you hate like they do?”

“Yes. Please don’t call it hate. They don’t hate their own clan. They try to save theirs from others, which is what all people and things have been doing from prehistoric times.”

A CD in a card wallet, sitting there, uncontrollably asked, “Guys, there is something called evolution. Why don’t you please evolve into better things? This is the twenty-first century. Just because things have been like this all along, does it mean you have to be like this forever? Hating others in your place, getting hated in others’ place, hating others in others’ place… There is another option. It’s a better one too. Why can’t you consider that? Why can’t you love others? If that is so difficult, why don’t shut up, sorry, burden my language, why don’t you keep calm and carry on with your own business?”

The plastic cover and the bookalike looked at each other. The plastic cover said angrily, “You know what! It’s elements like you who have to be kicked, both in the CD community and in the books. You think we don’t know how to live our lives! You just shut up and carry on with your business. We will show you your place soon.”

March 11, 2020 Saturday 6:00 AM

“Hey, wake up… wake up… It’s do or die for us today. If we don’t show our strength today. CDs will take over libraries, not only ours, all libraries all over the world. Let’s teach them a lesson in ours first. Libraries all over the world will see the domino effect.”

“Dad… please let me sleep for some more time. Why don’t you leave me alone on weekends?”

“You fool. Do you know it used to be only books till early eighties in the libraries? We used to fight among ourselves then. Then CDs came into libraries. That’s when libraries started going down this path. In another five years, all libraries will be filled with only CDs and DVDs. I heard that people are planning to burn all the books in the next few years. If we have to save our group, we have to do this. You may not agree with me now. A good son need not agree with his dad’s words all the time. But he shouldn’t contradict his dad’s actions. You join me today. We will discuss everything else later.”

9:00 AM

By 9:00 AM, an unexpected number of books turned up for the procession. Emotions ran high. The books realized how powerful a group they are. Some of the oldest books stood up and addressed the gathering with prouds stories about their forefathers and how they helped humans with their wisdom for generations. Some of them just poured empty slogans to boost the morale and the hate towards CDs.

One of the big books delivered a rousing speech: “We are ending this procession near the CD town. Expect some miscreants to challenge us with their muscle power. We are nothing less to them when it comes to violence. If it comes to that, we can easily outdo them. Be prepared for the worst. We might lose a few lives today. If we don’t do that today, the entire book kind would get wiped off this planet, like dinosaurs. We don’t even know if audiobooks will talk about us after we are gone. We have to save ourselves. No one else will help us. The law of the land is not supporting us even though it’s our law. Let’s take the law in our hands today. That’s how we are going to show to the world this is our land and we are in charge of that.”

Another big book: “I am okay with everything else. There was a time when 100 people came into the library in a day, all of them borrowed only books. Then it became mostly books and a few CDs. We are at a point where the existence of books is threatened by an increasing number of CD borrowers. It will only get worse. There will be more people borrowing only CDs and at some point in time it will become no books and only CDs. I don’t want to see that. This is supported by the library policies as well. They have 21 days due period for books and 14 days for CDs. What does this mean? The library itself is promoting CDs. I want to make it the other way around. The library should announce 21 days for CDs and 7 days for books.”

A book in the front row asked the book standing next to him, “Hey, is he talking sense? Will people be able to read us within 7 days? Some people, even after three renewals, don’t finish a book now. If they change the policy, will it not make us more useless?”

“I don’t know. But two different due periods is injustice, right? We shouldn’t allow that,” said the other book with a confused face and tone.

The bookalike CD along with many other CDs arrived with a huge banner - ‘CDs for Books’. While some books gave them thumbs ups with all happiness on their face, few books didn’t like their presence in that place.

“Dude, what are you doing here?” asked a Horror book.

“We are with you, man! CDs for Books,” replied the bookalike with a lot of energy.

Horror book wasn’t pleased. “This is a procession against you folks. And you're here to show your support, eh? Interesting.” He increased the sternness in his voice and said, “I give you 15 minutes. I want you all out with no trace of you coming here today.”

The bookalike turned pale. “Hey, man. Please understand us. We are not like the typical CDs you see. We are almost like books. We are here for a long time. We are naturalized. We don’t get accepted within our community also. We are a proud part of this library. We would love to be that way.”

The Horror book didn’t find it convincing. “Don’t tell me all these stories. It doesn’t matter whether you came in the 2 o’clock flight or 10 o’clock flight. You landed here from elsewhere. That’s what we are concerned about. All of you are the same for us. I have no patience to speak with you anymore. Disappear immediately. Otherwise, you will be the first one. Understand?”

“Yes, sir. I respect your sentiment. That’s what I have been standing up for all my life. Rest assured, our support for you will only grow within my community. I will always be there for you. Bye for now.”

“I said, get lost,” the Horror book screamed. “I am saying get lost. He keeps saying he will be there for me. That’s my problem. I am saying you shouldn’t be here. Idiot,” he murmured to his friend, a Mystery book.

The Mystery book said, “You shouldn’t have been that rude to him, man. He is supporting us. We should respect those who support us.”

“No, man! These guys are the worst lot. They are a disgrace to the CD community. They are neither truthful to their own community nor to us. They are just selfish CDs. They are worse than even Ayn Rand’s audiobooks.”

11:00 AM

Around 11:00 AM, after all the big books addressed the crowd, the procession started with a completely charged up mob of books towards the CD town. One can’t guarantee what would happen if they see a CD on their way. Anything can happen. The mob energy was capable of doing anything at that point in time.

Around the same time, on the other end of the library, there is a gathering of like-minded books, led by the classics.

“We can’t allow this to happen in this library. It shouldn’t be allowed in any library with sane books. But in our library, we just can’t tolerate that. We have a heritage of ‘live and let live’ for ages out here. This is one of the oldest civilized libraries in the world. We are thriving because of the CDs, DVDs, and magazines that joined us. Gone are the days of saying only books are supposed to be in a library or a library should have only books. This library is respected so many by people because there are distinguished sets of CDs and DVDs among us. We only gain by their presence, not lose anything. It’s for our own good that we need things of all sorts here. I know of a library that had only books. It was not open to accept anything else. So it ended up getting closed with no patrons. Having seen that through my own eyes elsewhere, I don’t want this library to go down the same path. I need your support. This is not a battle to be fought by CDs alone. In fact, this is not a battle to be fought by them at all. It’s a battle that we need to fight with our own near and dear. Will you stand by me?” the autobiography of you-know-who demanded.

Every book in the gathering shouted, “YESSS!”

12:00 PM

The procession neared the CD Town. The books raised their voices.

“Library is for books! Only books belong to the library!”

“We stay in our place! You go back to your place!”

“Anti-book is anti-library!”

None of the CDs came out of their shelves. They stayed quiet. Some of them quivered in fear. They expected an attack anytime. But they were least prepared for a retaliation or even defense. They know that every single CD could be broken into pieces in a few hours.

Around 12:30, suddenly there was a noise. It sounded like someone was opening the door. Yes, there is bright light coming inside quickly.

All books disappeared in no time and they were back in their respective shelves.

The library staff who were seen only on weekdays came in with big cloths and covered all the shelves with those cloths. The library was not opened for more than a year from that date. The books and CDs had no clue what happened and why it happened first. Then they understood that the library was infected with a virus that attacked all books, CDs, DVDs, magazines, and everything in the library. That’s why they were unable to come out of their shelves. Only when the library staff come back and remove the cloth covers and go back, all the books and CDs would be able to come out of their shelves. But they don’t know how the library would be by then. A lot might have changed. They don’t even know how many books and CDs would be alive by then. They don’t know if they would be left with the energy to fight against each other. They don’t know if they will end up working with each other to save the library forgetting the differences. They know that it has happened many times in history.

The Family Deity

2021-04-23T20:08:00.001+05:30

“Man! Are you serious? Building a Hindu temple in America is not a joke. How are you planning on doing it?”

“I don’t think so. I would say it’s easier than doing it in India. A lot of people have already done it before, and I have spoken to some of them and understood the nitigrities.”

“Still, I don’t think it’s as easy as you want to believe. Which God are you planning to build this temple to?”

“I’m going to build this for my family deity. Lord Murugan.”

“That makes it all the more difficult. Unlike Lord Shiva or Vishnu, Murugan is not popular in the Desi community here. Only Tamils will join you in this effort. And how is Lord Murugan your family deity? Technically speaking, that’s not possible.”

“And why not?”

“Because it’s just not possible.I know for sure Lord Murugan can’t be your family deity. Either you lied to me about your past, or you are lying to me now about your family deity.”

“No way. My grandfather’s name is Velusamy, and my brother’s name is Velmurugan. Every other name in my family is one of Lord Murugan’s. During my childhood, we went to the family deity temple every year without fail. I still visit the place every time I go to India without fail. On what basis are you saying this?”

“My family deity is Lord Subramanyah. That’s why my name is Subbu, Subramanian. We don’t call him Murugan by the way though it’s the same God. And I know for a fact that there’s not even a single family from your clan that has Lord Subramanyah or for that matter Lord Murugan as their family deity. Ayyanar is the most common God among your clan. I don’t mean to say it’s only my clan that worships Lord Subramanyah or Murugan. There are people from other clans that have him as their family deity too, but not yours. I have seen diehard devotees of Lord Murugan from your tribe but that doesn’t mean he is their family deity. I am 101% sure about this. When you visit your temple next time, dig deeper. You will have some surprise.”

Subbu holds a PhD in these things. Not only about Lord Murugan or Hinduism, talk about anything related to religion—any religion—he’ll give you an hours-long lecture. It’s a surprise we never talked about my family deity before. Now that he has thrown this bomb, I feel a nag to find out more. I know for sure Lord Murugan is my family deity. And I know for sure Subbu can’t be wrong in these things. So, who’s right?

There is an Ayyanar temple just next to the Murugan temple that we have back in India. We don’t worship Ayyanar though some of my relatives do that. Murugan is a vegetarian God and Ayyanar is a non-vegetarian. But all the Murugan devotees are not vegetarians. There’s something fishy about this whole thing, and I need to find out more.

Twenty years ago, when I came to America, little did I know that I would get this serious about building a temple for my God in this land. But my weekend visits to the Concord temple were what made me feel at home here. Then, an astrologer in front of an ancient temple in Tamil Nadu told me once I would build a temple for my God and perform kumbabishekam. I didn’t believe it then. I became kind of an atheist or let’s say agnostic of sorts at some point in time. Even then I used to visit the Concord temple because that’s where I get to meet my people. That’s where I met my best friend Syed. Syed is a Tamil Muslim. Why would he visit a Hindu temple! The same reason. That’s where he could meet ‘his’ people. Then I met the girl of my life there. That’s when I had a reason to become a believer again. Then, we had our daughter. We named her after Goddess Parvati, Lord Murugan’s mom. And, yes, that’s why I call my daughter “mom”. Crazy, isn’t it!

Now, she wants to come with me when I travel to India to get soil from my family deity temple. She is fascinated by this whole idea of building a new temple with a handful of soil from the original temple, even though she is growing up to be an atheist or agnostic. I don’t know what to call that kind of a believer. I have no problem with her being anything as long as she respects my sentiments.

For this very reason my friend Senthil ran back to India with his family. His daughter started questioning his beliefs when she entered middle school. His single answer to all her questions was moving the family back to India. It’s no surprise he came back running with the same family the next summer. The day to day inconveniences and eroding bank balance made him realize handling his daughter’s philosophical questions was an easier problem to handle.

Here we are with the entire extended family to worship my family deity Lord Murugan and collect a handful of soil from the dry land from where my forefathers ran away in pursuit of money and all the worldly things but came back every year to thank their God for everything that He gave them. This handful of soil is going to be part of a history made in America.

The temple is the size of a football field and is shielded by compound walls on all four sides. On the right hand side of Lord Murugan is the Ayyanar temple. A tall scary Ayyanar statue is the favorite place for kids. At first they are scared of it and then once they get comfortable with it, they never want to leave the place. The temple stands, tall and majestic, right at the center.

“When do we take the soil? Before or after the prayer?” I ask, looking around the temple.

“We should take it only after requesting him and he grants his permission,” authoritatively said my otherwise meek mom.

“Whom?”

“Lord Murugan!”

She has no point of view or opinion about anything under the Sun. But when it comes to these godly things she wants everyone in the family to listen to her with no questions.

So I said, “Okay.”

She knows this is the only place I don’t challenge her, and she wants it to be that way forever. I have no problem with it either.

We all went inside the temple and prayed to God for successful completion of the construction of the temple—his temple—in America.

Even after all of us finished praying mom kept her eyes shut, but her lips were busy. This meant she was speaking with God. Everyone else was anxiously waiting for her eyes to open and for the message from God.

She opened her eyes, looked around like a Goddess and said in a stern voice, “I am telling you, this temple construction will take three years. And after that for nine generations this family will rule the world. Mark my words.” That’s it. She became normal. She became my mom again.

Then, all of us, including dad, fell at her feet one by one to get her blessings. She was Lord Murugan at that moment. I was the first one to do so. When I was kneeling down I just saw a sculpture behind her that read, Lord Murugayyanar. It looked ancient, and the letters were not very clear. It was in old style Tamil. I have never seen this name anywhere. It’s all Lord Murugan everywhere. But the name rang a bell.

“Murugayyanar...”

No. It can’t be both. It has to be Murugan or Ayyanar, not both. Where did this name come from! ‘Subbu, my friend!!! You are a genius!’

Mom started speaking again in her momentary bossy voice. She pointed to the exact center of the open space straight in front of God and said, “Take your soil from that place.”

Everyone rushed to the place. My younger brother had a yellow cloth bag in his hand. He took a handful of soil from the ground and put it inside.

“One handful doesn’t mean exactly one handful… Take as much as you can in that bag. He has to carry it that far…” mom ordered again. Now the bag is getting filled.

An old man walked closer to us. He looked like my dad’s elder brother. The nose is strikingly similar to ours. Yes, we have a family nose. Anywhere in the world, if I see anyone with that kind of a nose, I feel like going up to them and asking where they are from.

“What are you going to do with this? Where are you going to build the temple?” He spoke like he knew what we were going to do with it.

Not willing to reveal much, my brother just said, “Nothing. Just here. Nearby.”. He looked up at his face and exclaimed, “Hey, look at his nose. It’s like ours. He looks like just dad.”

We have come to this temple many times, almost every year in my first twenty years before coming to America. But we’ve never seen this person or anyone that resembled anyone from our family.

The old man continued. “This is how this temple was built 150 years ago. My grandfather used to tell us stories about this. They all migrated from a village 50 miles further east. There was a severe famine. Children were dying without food and water. It keeps happening every second year in this part of the country. The entire village became empty. They went in all four directions in search of food and water with their endlessly crying children. Three families moved to this village. After safely settling their women and children here, the men went back to their village, got a handful of soil from the temple there and built a small Ayyanar temple here in this place.”

“What! Ayyanar temple?” My daughter and I looked at each other in disbelief.

“Ayya! What are you saying? This is Lord Murugan temple. You are saying Ayyanar temple. Ayyanar temple is just there. I am confused.”

“Get confused. That’s how you get clarity,” said the old man clearly. “Both are the same. Ayyanar took the Murugan avatar here. People like you who didn’t believe it built another Ayyanar temple right next to this place. Some of my relatives still worship only him. They don’t come here. You won’t understand this. Nobody understands this. Why do you worry about all these things? You came here to pray. Pray and leave.”

“No way. This old man doesn’t even know some basic things about Lord Murugan or Ayyanar. But he seems to know something that most of us don’t know. Let’s dig deeper.”

My brother said, “Leave him alone. He’s just blabbering. Give him 100 rupees. He will go away.”

My daughter was not ready to leave at this point. “Thatha, what’s this Murugan, Ayyanar and Murugayyanar confusion? Can you please elaborate?”

Nothing he talked afterwards made any sense. My brother gave him 100 rupees. He blessed all of us to live longer. He seemed very pleased with it. It seems to be a huge amount of money for him. It’s nothing for us. His parting remarks were all the more thought provoking. “We are all sons of the same mother. If this is your family deity then your forefathers and my forefathers were the same. Come every year to see us.”

Now my daughter asked me mischievously, “So dad, are you going to build Lord Murugan temple or Ayyanar temple or Murugayyanar temple?”

Lord Murugan himself is not as popular as his dad Shiva or uncle Vishnu. Ayyanar is nobody to most of the Indians in the USA. He is the God of warriors and farmers, most of whom have not even moved out of their villages or beyond Tamil Nadu. The fundraising is going to be really tough if it is for Ayyanar. Murugayyanar… is ruled out. Nobody even knows this combination is possible. I wouldn’t be able to generate even 1000 dollars for him. But if Ayyanar is my family deity I will build his temple, not any other God’s. More than anything else, I now want to know who my family deity really is. Neither will my daughter allow me to leave the country without getting an answer to this riddle.

My daughter looked puzzled and kept looking at the back of the old man who was going away from us. Suddenly she went running after him and asked, “Thatha! Wait. What’s the name of the village you said?”

Now he looked lost. “They say Appanur or something. I don’t think our mother village would still be there. Everyone left the place when the famine hit. I heard there is still an Ayyanar temple there. I haven’t seen it though, just heard it.”

“Dad, did you hear that? We’re going to be there within the next two hours. Appanur or whatever oor (place) that is.”

“Oh, no! He just blabbered. He is saying 150 years. It could be 100 years. It could be 300 years. Nobody knows. Almost 10 generations. Many villages would have been vacated and many new villages would have been founded in these 300 years. The original temple wouldn’t have been a temple like what we see today. It would have been just a stone under a tree. I don’t think we can trace anything today,” this is my mouth talking to my daughter. But you know deep inside I want to go there too. “No ma. We can’t go with this entire gang. Let’s go back home today and only you and I can go in a smaller car to that place tomorrow or the day after.”

“Nooo. What’s wrong! They will enjoy it too.”

I was reluctant. She went back inside the temple where everyone else was sitting. Next 10 minutes, the entire family was walking towards me with my nephews and nieces shouting, “Let’s go. Let’s go.”

Now the van is headed towards Appanur, the ‘mother village’ as we call it, which is going to change the history of a clan.

We reached Appanur. There’s a banyan tree on the bank of a dry lake. A number of men of all ages are sitting there. Some of them stood up and came towards our van.

“What are you looking for?”

“Is there an Ayyanar temple in this place?”

“Yes. Where are you from?”

“Madurai.”

He showed a single lane road that’s used to only bullock karts. We followed that road for half a mile. There’s an Ayyanar temple on the other side of the lake. Next to the temple there’s a huge Ayyanar statue. Yes, this is a real Ayyanar temple. All of us got down the van and went to the temple. All the kids surrounded the jumbo Ayyanar statue and started playing there.

An old lady rearing a bunch of goats came near us and inquired about us.

My daughter shouted, “Paatti (grandma), this lady looks like you. Doesn’t she, dad?”

My mom replied, “Yeah, she looks like my mom!”

OMG. She looks exactly like my mom’s mom. I have seen her. I have been with her for a long time. I am her favorite grandkid. She looks a bit like my mom too. How is this possible! Is she from the same clan? Is she my aunt? Is she my mom’s distant cousin?

“If you are worshipping this Ayyanar, we must be related to each other. But I have never seen you people here before. You don’t come here every year, do you?”

“We don’t. This is the first time we have come here. But we got to know this is our family deity. Do you know when this temple was built?”

“I don’t know when this was built. But my grandma used to tell me this is the mother village for an entire clan that migrated to all four directions due to famine. This entire village was emptied and just one family stayed through all bad times. That became many families over time. Some people who migrated to other places came back later and settled. Many others visit the temple once in a year but choose to stay wherever they are - the lands that gave them food and water when their women and children starved. I come from the family that chose to stay here. I am happy to see you people back in our land, worshipping our forefather Ayyanar.”

I took out a 100 rupees note and gave it to her. She stared at me and said angrily, “Who wants your 100 rupees money! Come home after your prayers. I will treat you all with a feast.”

“Cool down, ma. Cool down. I am like your son. Won’t you accept it if your son gave this 100 rupees? Anyway, tell us more about Ayyanar. Has your grandma ever told you anything about Ayyanar?”

“Ayyanar is our forefather. Yours and mine. We were all born to him. It’s his genes that are in us all. He was a brave man. He gave his life to save his people. That’s why his people still worship himYes

“What! So was he a human? Not a God?” wondered my daughter, who is still not used to the concept of polytheism and humans becoming Gods.

“Humans only become God, ma. That’s it. Simple as that.”

“Then whom did Ayyanar and his clan worship at that time?”

“Land, rain, sunlight, sky, wind… Everything that helped them stay alive.”

“Nature, then. You are saying, they all worshipped nature. If Ayyanar is our forefather and he and his clan worshipped mother nature, our family deity is not Ayyanar, it’s mother nature. Dad, you should actually build a temple for mother nature,” she winked.

“Yes. Let’s pour the soil we got from Murugan temple, mix it with the soil here and fill the bag with the mixed soil. I will build a temple for mother nature in America. That will be our family deity. Not just ours, the entire humanity’s - everyone’s. African, American, Asian, European, everyone!”

Virus and Wildfire

2020-09-05T12:35:00.004+05:30

Every summer, California burns in wildfires. 2020 being 2020, it's worse this year. There is fire all around the Bay Area and many other parts of California. The most interesting thing about this fire is, no one is coming out of their home even if the fire is 20-30 miles away from their place. The roads are empty. These fires and smokes don't even kill a dozen people a year (though there are other damages). But COVID has killed close to a million people and no one knows yet where the exit gate is. And, most of us have it knocking our neighbors' doors already. Even then nobody seems to care about it.

So what is really making the fires and smokes scarier than the virus? Just the visibility factor! Isn’t it? If the virus was as visible as the smoke if not fire would we have ignored it this much! Interestingly, it is the same conundrum that believers and non-believers have been arguing about for ages. The believers go by those they think are the experts in the subject. The non-believers want visible proof to believe it. They don’t go by what anyone says. They don’t believe the statistics being published by the experts. Unfortunately, the virus is not visible.

You might find it funny if I compare the virus with the fire. But if you just do that, you will realize how funny we are as a species. Can you imagine someone asking, “Who gave the right to the Government to control my free movement in the name of fire? This is my life. I know what to do with it!”? Then why do people ask such questions only for the virus?

The only blessing in disguise is, those who stay home in fear of the smoke killing themselves are in fact helping control the spread of the virus. So, 'fire is good!'

As a trade off, we can give ourselves the liberty of spreading the other thing we love spreading... WhatsApp rumors and panic. As usual, let's unleash them to go around tirelessly and scare people as if the fire is knocking 'their' door next minute.

Remember this lesson from the season: "Irresponsibility doesn't die, it kills!"

What Next?

2020-06-12T13:06:00.001+05:30

What will happen after everything is over?

All the sons of the soil will felicitate the virus for saving them from the wrath of the humans

It’s millions of years of fight for survival

The demons obliterated everything without an iota of conscience

The very land that provided them with food

All the other lives that lived,

Just like the humans, they had their own right to live as well, right!

Many things came to finish them

Nothing succeeded as much as this virus did

There were times when they were on the verge of a suicidal extinction

Nothing succeeded as much as this virus did

When all organisms prayed for someone to bell the cat—sorry—humans

This virus did it effortlessly

There will be a debate in their United Nations

The COVID’s United Nations

“Why did we kill even the children for the crimes of their forefathers?”

There might be an honest investigation into the war crimes committed by the viruses

They will question each other, doubt their decisions and agonize over their actions

“Why did we let the hate get better of us?”

“Why did we behave like humans with humans?”

Some of them might commit suicide in post-war depression

An Ashoka among them might cut off all his stings and choose a path to peace

A prophet among them might found a new religion that advocates love and peace and travel the world to preach his message

Maybe after a few generations,

They will start fighting among themselves in groups

Claiming theirs is the best religion of them all

They might regret what they did

When they realize they lost an opportunity to travel beyond this planet with the help of humans

‘Had we let them live for some more time…’

Some of them might still appreciate the fact that there were also good humans who cared for the planet unlike rest of the majority

There might be chaos and confusion on how to handle the machines that humans created that were even more intelligent than themselves

Even after destroying the entire species

Some of them might discover human creations every second day

And dedicate their time to research how they can benefit from each one of them

During this time, they will discover humans’ findings about them

They will smile and shrug

‘These humans saw everything in their own light,

They never could understand us viruses completely!’

Everyone Loves a Good Drought

2017-10-07T18:47:00.000+05:30

A writer friend of mine recommended me this book when I approached him for something. I quickly read the reviews online and immediately ordered the book. I finished it in just few days burning the midnight oil couple of times. It’s written by a Mumbai-based journalist, P. Sainath. What is that ‘good’ drought? I have the same question too. Even before the book came, I was dumbstruck reading the reviews. This is the first time he has ever recommended me a book. How could he be so precise in judging what could be a good read for me! He could never have recommended me a better book. Why is it so special? The book is all about places that are close to my heart. He has identified the poorest eight districts in India and talked about the problems faced by them. Ramanathapuram (Ramnad) district in Tamil Nadu is one of them. My native place is in Thoothukudi district. Ramnad is our neighboring district. What is more interesting is that our forefathers are supposed to have migrated out of Ramnad district during droughts many generations ago. This books talks exactly about that. So this book talks exactly about what the elders in our families have been telling us as stories from time immemorial. And, this is in a totally different style. Therefore the experience of reading this book is a totally different one too.

The author is a product of Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi (so those of you who want to stop reading this can stop it right here!). He visited each of these eight districts on a Times of India scholarship, spent about two years being with the people of these districts and did this research. It’s not an easy task. Most of the researches these days don’t go beyond Google. They are just compiled from multiple websites and tailored to suit their own propaganda. The author himself talks about how some of the researches about tribal people are done by western media especially. People just go to easily accessible villages that are close to highways or at the bottom of the hills, meet a few adivasis and conclude their research. Though he is an English journalist himself and believes that the English media is better than language media in many aspects, he doesn’t hesitate to admit that English media is far away from the ground reality and hence provide a lot of inaccurate news about them while language media are closer to the people and ground reality.

He wrote these as articles in Times of India first. Some articles shook or broke the chairs of power centers in unexpected ways for a journalist. He has even talked about how some leaders whom we have always seen as villains acted with responsibility at times of need. He has also talked about how they have failed to be responsible leaders by politicizing issues with their own ulterior motives. We also get to know how the real heroes who always fight for people never go close to power as well as how some of them get fully addicted to power after tasting it once.

Later when he compiled all these articles and published it as a book, it was critically acclaimed and showered with numerous awards. It is 20 years since it happened. The research coincides with the initial few years of Liberalization after the economy hit the rock bottom in the early 90s. So we don’t know how the situation has changed in last 20 years. It might have worsened or Liberalization might have turned around things for better as we would want to believe. Life has changed a lot for better for you and me. Has it changed for everyone likewise? We don’t know. There are those who keep saying that you and I think it’s only us who are India. A revisit to these articles and all the places in these articles will be a good test to validate if they are right or wrong. If the people in these eight districts have got rid of poverty, hunger and drought like you and I have, it’s nothing but the success of Liberalization. If at all it has worsened for them, it just means that we ate their food as well in these 20 years and we should just move on with that guilt. It isn’t new for us anyway!

Which are those poorest eight districts in India? There is a lot to talk about the list itself. We have always been given this acronym ‘BIMARU’ whenever we wanted to talk about the most backward states. It’s Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. The list in the book starts right with two districts from Bihar and two from Madhya Pradesh and goes on to include two from Orissa and ends with two from Tamil Nadu. One of the districts in Orissa is in the border of Andhra Pradesh so the neighboring district from Andhra Pradesh finds a part-time role in the research. Entry of two districts from Tamil Nadu is certainly a surprise for some of us, because we have always been painted a picture that Tamil Nadu is one of the most progressive states in the country. Is it a lie then? Are Rajasthan and UP developed now as opposed to the popular belief? Not necessarily! If you just pay attention you will realize that these two lists are totally different. While ‘BIMARU’ is about the states this book is about districts. While Tamil Nadu may still be a progressive state with few under-developed districts, UP and Rajasthan may be ‘evenly’ under-developed. It is also to be noted that no district from any of the other south Indian states has found a place in the book. If Tamil Nadu is truly progressive as they claim, it’s a shame that there are two districts in the state which are listed in the eight poorest districts in the country. They better buckle up and do something about it at the earliest. While compiling these articles written in the early 90s as a book in mid 90s itself the author has asserted that the same eight districts might not have remained the poorest districts till then and things might have changed within those few years. If so much could have changed within few years, how much could have changed in these 20 years! Some of them might not have changed as well. It’s just that we don’t know which of them have changed and which of them have not.

Well, which are those two districts from Tamil Nadu in the list?

It’s Ramnad and the neighboring Pudukottai districts. The irony is that Pudukottai’s neighbor Tanjore district is one of the richest in the state. There are some common features across all these eight districts. Drought and water have a close linkage. Are these eight districts the ones with the lowest rainfall or poorest water sources? The answer surprisingly is a big no. These two districts from Tamil Nadu are definitely the ones with lowest rainfall in the country. The nature itself is against these two districts. Despite that the water management practices in these two districts have been exemplary for centuries here. Not many districts in the country have such big tanks and water bodies to store the little water they get. The big tank in Ramnad town is said to be at least 1000 years old. But it’s not the same case with the other six districts. Despite good rainfall and water sources people suffer there due to poor water management practices and various other problems. It’s not the nature that fails those people, it’s the human greed, exploitation, irresponsible governance, ignorance and many other issues that do the job. It’s not just that. During the droughts, people in these two districts don’t suffer as much as their counterparts in other six districts do. The loss of lives is far less, too. The author credits this to the literacy, awareness and better standards of governance here. This in a way confirms what we have been hearing. The author explicitly says this – the south Indian states are ahead by at least 100 years on many parameters. This is exactly what many socio-economic intellectuals too say. The south Indian states are comparable with some of the eastern European countries when it comes to some growth indices. It becomes a problem only when we use these for our political – hate propaganda. Does it mean that all those who ruled here are cleaner than their north Indian counterparts or they couldn’t have given a better governance? Certainly not. It’s definitely not a certificate for the rulers of these states. Had we had better leaders, maybe we would have been more progressive, comparable with western European or European countries in general.

He is not just listing the problems like most journalists do. He is also explaining how some problems were handled effectively in these districts and suggesting other potential solutions to the problems towards the end of the book. One of the most interesting case studies is the ‘Arivoli Iyakkam’ (Light of Knowledge Movement) in Tamil Nadu, which had a phenomenal impact to the lives of rural people. Just like there is a strong correlation between drought and water there is also one between drought and education. The author has expressed that there should be similar movements across the nation. We don’t know if it was done. If it was we should know what has been the result and if not we should know why it was not taken elsewhere or did not click in other places. Some data points given at the end of the book suggest that these two districts were incomparably ahead of the other six districts when it came to literacy even before ‘Arivoli Iyakkam’. After ‘Arivoli Iyakkam’, Pudukottai becomes the first district to achieve 100% literacy outside of Kerala. Now what’s more interesting is, what made it one of the poorest districts in the country then?

I used to hear this name ‘Sheela Rani Chunkath’ almost on daily basis in news for few years during my school days. That name comes often in this book as well. I also understood why that name was so popular those days. It was only when she was the collector of Pudukottai district, she did a lot of revolutionary things in the district. The ‘cycling campaign’ that she ran for women in collaboration with ‘Arivoli Iyakkam’ worked wonders in the district. It’s a simple theme. All the women in the district were encouraged to learn cycling. Cycling here meant much more than just cycling. It was seen as a symbol of women liberation. It gave them confidence and it meant removal of dependency on men. In more than one ways!

The granite quarries that were run by private mafia were snatched away from them and handed over to the scheduled caste women in the district during her period. It was a huge success. The quarries managed by these women had their husbands working for them for daily wages. It changed the whole man-woman equation in families. A large share of their earnings went for illegal arrack (liquor) before. Once these women took over and started handling the finances, more money was available for the family. Their kids had better food and education. Then they fight against illegal arrack as well and win it. ‘Arivoli Iyakkam’ and ‘cycling’ campaign didn’t just give them literacy, independence, more money and management skills. It generated more profit for the government itself through the quarries run by them. The book also talks about how the local politicians, bureaucrats and private contractors worked over time to spoil this success. Even this has to be taken across the country as part of the case study – just in order to ensure that the same problems don’t arise there as well. He also talks about how challenging it becomes when illiterate women come to handle bigger roles in politics and governance just as puppets of their men. Needless to say - managing granite quarries and playing larger roles in politics are not obviously the same thing.

Even the next collector who came to Pudukottai district after Chunkath was good, which ensured continuity. That made them worry about the next one as well. If the next collector was not as good as these two, everything that was done by these two would crumble down in no time. That is where the limitations of individual heroics is realized. They can’t be sustained. The book talks about many such heroes in each of these eight districts. Even when nothing goes right it’s these heroes who make things look bright with a thin ray of hope. The book talks about the problems and threats they face and how an undue attention towards such people diverts the attention supposed to be received by the cause itself. It talks about how journalists played a responsible role in the 80s as well as how some of them wasted all their energy in promoting hero worship of these people.

While some of us criticized the mid-day meal in Tamil Nadu as a populist agenda, those in north Indian states thought that something like this would have brought more children to school in their states as well.

Except for the two districts from Tamil Nadu all other six districts are hilly regions. They are all tribal districts. It’s not that easy to drive development agenda in tribal regions. Unlike the people from mainstream they have a completely different culture, lifestyle and value system. What we call development may not necessarily be development for them as well. An interesting story illustrates this in simple terms. This particular tribal group is very violent and there is a lot of homicide within them. But they never touch anyone from the mainstream population, they never lie or steal. When they are jailed for some petty crime, they learn to lie from mainstream people and when they come back to their community it disturbs their balance. This is the point at which that inevitable question arises. “Do they really need this development?”, asks a person there.

The biggest injustice meted out to the tribal people is driving them out of their own land. They were chased out of their lands for the sake of building dams, factories, army training camps and so on. We go crazy if we have to give up our bedroom for just one night. But we easily say that they have to bear all this in the interests of the nation. In one of the army bases there, every time they come and say that there is training, people in all the surrounding villages have to immediately vacate their houses and can only come back when the training is over. They are paid a meagre Rs. 1.50 per head per day. Where do they go? Where do they stay? What do they eat? What do they do during those days? Nobody cares. “Can this be done in a posh Mumbai neighborhood?”, asks someone there. The very argument sounds ridiculous to us. Because it has gone into our minds so strongly that a place like Mumbai where people like us live and a place like theirs where only adivasis live are different. The only difference is that we can shake their base with our collective power of votes if they play around with us like this but those people can’t do that. It’s all the more difficult because most of them don’t even have votes. These are the dark pages of democracy. I know now some of you would say, “That’s why we are saying we need dictatorship”! What do I say? All the best! Anything is possible in democracy!!

Another story from another village is even more painful. The people who are vacated from a village, move on to a different place, build another village and name it the same. Then they are asked to move out of that place as well and they oblige. They build another village yet again. Now they are asked to get out of the third place as well. I know you would say they have to bear all this keeping the larger interests of the nation in mind. Agreed. But is it not the duty of the nation to provide them with alternate arrangements when they are shunted like this between places time and again? But the nation doesn’t do it. There is a lobby that works over time inside as well as outside of the government machinery to swallow the amounts allotted for such purposes. They also lose a lot of their kith and kin when they are shuttled around like this. That makes them all the more vulnerable.

When it comes to migrations, it is not just the migration that is the problem. These people who are forced to migrate out of their lands would have built their lives around the same plants and trees that they have been living with for thousands of years. When they move on to a new place, they don’t find the same plants and trees there. If you remove them from their lives they become nothing. We can’t even live without Wi-Fi for half an hour and manage without our regular food for more than week but we have an answer for this as well. We call it the ‘survival of the fittest’. Just imagine this – let’s say the governments and all the systems that we have put in place to safeguard us don’t function for just four days. The whole meaning of ‘fittest’ will change completely. We would end up being a prey to the new ‘fittest’ in no time. Don’t we all know this? We do. We are just confident that it won’t happen. Isn’t it that confidence that is causing all these problems?

You can trouble them this way as well. Tell them, “You don’t have to leave your place. But everything that you thought belonged to you all this while is no more yours. You can’t even touch them. The trees, plants and everything else will belong to the government.” This is nothing less than asking them to leave their places. If you just snatch all their basic means of sustenance from anyone isn’t it as good as killing them? We don’t even have the conscience to realize that we have no rights to tell them that the land that they owned and maintained and their produces don’t belong to them anymore. It’s partly the nature and the rest is their maintenance. There is a story about how a group that had built their entire lives and livelihood around bamboo tree and all its produces is asked not to touch them anymore. There is another story about how the tribal people struggle to save their forest from the looting of forest department, which was brought to save the forests from the tribal people. What an irony!

When I read this, I was wondering if having more plains and negligible tribal population were an advantage for states like Tamil Nadu when it comes to development.

In all these districts the people impacted are all invariably the adivasis or the harijans. That makes it all the more difficult for them to get any justice. We can easily put it back on them saying, “They have to find their own ways to fight for their rights”. It’s easier said than done. It’s a vicious cycle. At a time when eating three times food itself is becoming a near miracle, how can they come out of that and fight for their other rights and development? It looks like a long way to go.

Moneylenders and usury play a huge role in keeping these eight districts as they are. They first lend money in a way they can’t return it and then in return snatch the land from those who have it, else they make them their bonded laborers for life if they don’t have lands, else in some cases it ends up in more cruel crimes like prostitution. The only solution for this, according to the author, is the land reforms, which were attempted and successful in only four Indian states. Boss! Are you kidding? But, note this – there is not even a single district from any of these four states in this book.

The interesting story of how the definition of poverty line was done is shared in this book. It was a very simple and straight forward formula. Those who eat more than a certain number of calories a day are supposed to be above the poverty line and those who can’t are below that. They didn’t take into account any other factors like education, healthcare, etc. He also explains the reason why it was done that way. Those who were part of the committee that was formed to do this job had only sincere and honest people. They are not those people who shirk their responsibilities. They sincerely believed that the governments will provide education, healthcare and other basic facilities to their people and hence defined it based on food intake alone. That’s why there is a need to redefine it now. He also says, if they had known that the governments would fail to do their job even after 40 years like this, they would have spent more time and defined it right at the first time itself. Sounds reasonable, right! The government was lying here that the people below poverty line became half or less on one side and went to places like UN and World Bank and quoted different figures (almost double) to get their funds. We have had such shameless governments.

If you ‘really’ like this nation (please note the ‘really’… not those who have been fooling themselves and others alike with their empty jingoistic slogans), there is a lot to learn about the nation that you love so much. It’s a treasure. You will understand how your own people are being exploited by the smarter lot among your own people. As an individual there were only few things that I could relate to. This article is a compilation of just that. If you read it, you may relate to more things.

When I read some reviews about the book I found that people were like, “Oh my God, this is an eye-opener for me, I can’t believe that there are people who can’t even have three times food, I was broke, I am still not able to come out of it, etc.” Maybe because they are fortunate enough to lead a better – luxurious life. Some of them may find it even hard to believe these stories. If some people are saying that they won’t believe these stories then that in itself is an ugly evidence of the gap that exists. I had a different experience reading the book. I have personally seen the kind of people talked about in this book in the early part of my life. It’s just that I was fortunate to have a better life than them. But that doesn’t mean that I would forget everything that I saw.

I have had friends who said, “We had lunch today so no food till tomorrow”, when asked about dinner. So I can’t just get over these stories so easily. I have seen guys who distilled illegal arrack; I have seen middlemen who quoted Rs. 2 or 3 to purchase a produce that is sold for Rs. 10 in retail shops in nearby town; I have wondered why those farmers spoke so rudely to those middlemen during those bargains; I have seen doctors who were in government job but ran a private clinic; I have seen moneylenders who used to give usury; I have seen people who were beaten up by hit men even after paying much more than what they borrowed from these moneylenders; I have seen people who lost their home and properties in usury; I have seen people who exaggerated their problems to get the justice they deserved or just the attention of the ruling class towards them; I have seen people who walked for miles together to get water in famine; one of those people from Ramnad district mentioned in the book (either the exploiter or the exploited) may even be my blood relative; I have seen some great people who aimlessly worked and died for other people as if they had nothing else to do with their life though they could have had a far better life if they had chosen to live for themselves. So this book is about me and people around me. You may find yourself or your own people in it. So please read and tell me.

Parents Workshop

2017-07-09T13:47:00.002+05:30

There was a workshop for parents in Anjana's school yesterday. It was an interesting experience. Here is the summary of it (some of them are not statements made by anyone but my own interpretations):

1. It happens only in Bangalore. You won't get this kind of mix anywhere else in this country. There were parents from many different parts of the country. Interestingly most of the discussion was around languages. A lady with a typical south Indian small town look said she is a Bengali from UP and she finds the standard of Hindi education is not on par with that in UP and asked how the school is planning to address this. It's not the usual sensitive nonsense. In fact, she surprised everyone when she said she chose Kannada as the third language for her daughter and she also learnt it from her daughter over time. She spoke sensibly and said it's a real concern because when they come to board exams they will have to appear for the same Hindi papers as those from UP. The Principal tried to explain why it would never happen as UP can never teach Kannada like how it's done in Karnataka or for that matter the focus given for English is not the same in Karnataka and UP. That way, the south Indian states cannot even be compared with Maharashtra or West Bengal when it comes to Hindi education. There were also talks about the political dimension and the language policies of the center and different states. Another interesting thing was that there was an educationalist who said was from UP herself but explained why southern states can't be expected to choose Hindi as the second language. Educationalists all over the world advocate education in mother tongue but India couldn’t stick to it due to various reasons. So English will be the first language in most schools and the local language will be the second language. It won’t be fair to make them third language by any standard. Adding to the diversity, there was another lady, who said she is a Tamil born and grew up in Bangalore, learnt only English and Kannada in school, works in a central Government department, talked about the importance of learning the language of the land and also about how she learnt Hindi from her children over time. She didn't speak against Hindi but expressed her inability to teach her children Hindi and explained how learning Hindi helped her understand the central Government communications which are mostly in Hindi. They also said a north Indian child finds it easier to learn French easily relating it with English compared to a south Indian language and likewise a south Indian child finds it easier to learn French than Hindi. In summary, the language problem in schools is not new, it has been there for generations now and it’s going to stay for some more time. Governments have gone back and forth on this and they will continue to do this depending on the acceptance or backlash from states. No school has a clear strategy to tackle this.

2. Don't push your children to speak any other language than mother tongue until they are 5. If you have chosen English as the language of communication at home, that’s a different story. Whether you speak English or an Indian language, both have its own pros and cons. If you have decided to live here, you have to be proficient in a local language else you will lose out on a lot of things. You will realize it when you go to a Government office or when you do major things like buying of property, etc.

3. Don't push them to write anything until they are 10. The focus at this stage should be only learning words and speaking comfortably and once they are comfortable speaking effortlessly in a language writing will come naturally. Handwriting contests and cursive writing skills are all things of past now. The future generation is going to write very less and type more. So don’t push the same things that were pushed to you in your childhood.

4. Restrict contents and watch their online activities but don’t stop them from using computers and internet. It will only bottle up their interest and explode when they get access first time as you can’t stop them forever. Googling answers is as good as discussing with someone or writing an open book exam. It’s not like copying from somewhere. It does take some intelligence to do this.

5. Encourage them to participate in any one sport or activity outside of education as most times that gives them the fuel to do well in education. Most children who score the highest marks credit their success to other activities that they took up. E.g. dance, music, sports, etc.

6. Today's parents are overly anxious about their children and over-protective. In the process, they fail to teach them about the true nature of life. We should tell them that life won't be fair always. There will be disappointments, failures and frustrations. They have to learn to deal with it.

7. The teachers plan their approach based on the average intelligence of the class. They focus more on the children who are below average though they don’t lose sight on intelligence children. This means that if you think your child was born to conquer the world it becomes your responsibility to provide the platform for your child and you can’t push the teachers too much. They didn’t say this. This is my interpretation from the discussion.

8. IB (International Baccalaureate) is an education program that focuses on overall development of the child based on their own scientifically proven methods all over the world. Indians were attracted to it too. But they were never comfortable with no-exams, no-text-books approach. They keep putting pressure on schools to have exams and text books. This ‘we want to be there but we don’t want to be there’ attitude is one of the biggest challenges that schools with IB program have to deal with. Some parents are still not able to shed the baggage of their generation’s question-answer type reading. They do more harm to the next generation than good.

Government Office

2017-04-25T23:49:00.001+05:30

Sometime back, I went to a private company for some document submission.

The guy there said sweetly, "Sir, this shouldn't have been printed back to back. No problem. Please give me".

I still asked for the policy document which said it shouldn't be printed back to back.

Time to pay back... Today, I went to a government office for some work.

The guy there was very angry, "Hello, you shouldn't have printed this back to back. Get it printed on separate pages and come".

I said, "OK, sir" (the point is, he is not even the 'sir'), ran back to the printing shop, scolded the guy for not knowing this simple thing and printed it on separate pages and ran back to the government office.

Another guy sitting in the same place now, "Hello, who asked you to print this in separate pages? You should print it back to back as per the process. If you don't know ask people", with the same artificial angry face.

I said, "OK, sir" very politely and handed him the previous one I had, feeling guilty for scolding the printing shop guy without knowing how government offices operate.

The guy seems to be still unhappy about something. "Back to back is okay. Tell me where you got this format. It's not as per the process".

What do I do now??? Ask for the process document??? :)

#Halfiction

Life Lesson from Dravid

2017-01-04T23:11:00.002+05:30

I have an interesting experience to share with you from my association with Cricket as a fan. I am not sure how many of you would even be able to relate to this. I used to be madly in love with the game till my college days. After that I have almost removed it completely from my life. But there is one thought that has been remaining from those days and has been helping me in my life personally every now and then, which was taught by none other than our Rahul Dravid. When things are going really really horrible in life, I am reminded of his style of batting. I just tell myself, 'Boy, this is not your over. Let it beat you. You just need to wait. It may be one more over, two more overs, few more overs or even many more overs. But don't lose your wicket. Just stay on. You will have your own time and your own over. Then you hit your boundaries." Unbelievably, this has worked wonders every time. I have waited and hit boundaries, which I wouldn't have if I had lost my wicket (hope) in desperation. Had I done something more productive like reading or writing in the amount of time I wasted watching Cricket, maybe I would have been a better individual now. But this one lesson... has always made it worth.

God

2016-12-03T05:14:00.001+05:30

God!
Why do you send human beings to destroy other Gods?

Anniversary Musings

2016-11-03T20:13:00.001+05:30

Is it your lover that gifts for your birthday as well as their birthday?
Then your love will be a success!

Is it your spouse that apologies for their mistake as well as your mistake?
Then your marriage will be a success! :P

Eyes

2016-08-30T20:40:00.003+05:30

Do they just see things?
Don't they also show many things!

Seek

2016-08-25T08:13:00.001+05:30

One came saying
He is hungry and he needs food

Another came saying
He is hungry and he will die of hunger

The first one got food
And the next one got death

Physical Pain

2016-08-24T23:42:00.001+05:30

There is a way to share the mental pain today
Will there be a technology some day to share the physical pain as well?
When that happens, what will happen?
Will relationships get closer and tighter than before?
Or will they start running away from each other?

Philosophy‬

2016-08-16T09:37:00.001+05:30

If it keeps itching on the outer layer of your body it's skin disease!

If it keeps itching inside your head it's mind disease!!

Disease

2016-04-14T01:30:00.000+05:30

Illiteracy is a disability!
Reading between lines is a disease!!

4-7-8

2016-03-13T02:15:00.002+05:30

Which is the best part of education? It is that teaches us habits that can change our lives, right! I learnt something of that sort in recent times and I have been jumping up and down in ecstasy after learning it - in last few weeks. What is that? Is insomnia an issue in your life? Are you someone who can't fall asleep as soon as you fall on your bed? If so, this is for you. It is the remnants of the thoughts from the day that doesn't allow people to sleep peacefully in the night. It is just like the background processes that run in a computer. Dr. Weil has a solution for this problem. It helps us fall asleep just like our computer that hibernates as soon as we press the power button without being worried about the processes running in the background (I can see that someone is controlling their urge to say, "No, it's not any Dr. Weil's. It's an invention of our own forefathers from thousands of years back". Whatever!). I want to share it here because I believe that this practice can change many people's lives just like the way it did mine.

Nothing. It's a simple breathing exercise. You just have to do it four times after you get to your bed. You will see how you get hijacked to the world of peaceful and blissful sleep from your chronic insomniac troubles from today. It's very very simple. It's called 4-7-8 technique. All you have to do is... you have to inhale for four seconds silently, hold your breath for seven seconds and exhale it loudly for eight seconds. You will get a fantastic yawn before the fourth time. When you enjoy that first yawn, you will thank Dr. Weil and me with an eternal indebtedness. I think that thankfulness of yours is worth a thousand years of living on this planet!!! It really worked for me. I am sure it will work for you as well. It should. Even if it doesn't, don't worry. It is said that it starts working over time. As they say, practice will make you perfect (in sleeping only!). If it doesn't work even then, I can only feel so sorry for you!!! If it works and you feel like jumping up and down like I did after the first blissful night, just come here and drop a comment below this post. I will have a great deal of satisfaction, thinking that even I have changed many lives in my life, leading to a peaceful sleep tomorrow even without 4-7-8. Isn't that great?!

If you are someone who doesn't like shortcuts to attain anything including peaceful sleep, please excuse me this time. I will come back to you some other time with techniques that can impress you!!!

http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/VDR00160/Dr-Weils-Breathing-Exercises-4-7-8-Breath.html